Survival Courses

Discovering "who you really are" is what happens

in the wilderness when you are pushed beyond

deceptive limitations of your brain.

We take you on a trip back in time to simpler days, teaching you the old ways, which will help you become more self-reliant and independent in the 21st Century. Dressed in hand-made deerskins, using tools usually reserved for plexiglass in a museum, our instructors have actually been in serious life/death situations, so they teach you from first-hand experience, not from a text-book.

Gray Wolf, our lead instructor, spends weeks at a time in the wilderness--deserts, forests, mountains--following the ancient paths and forging new ones in places so remote, he hears echoes of a time forgotten. He started his survival classes to share these soulful echoes with you and to help people on their path to find their true self.

Though are classes are steeped in ancient, time-honored skills that sustained humans long before reliance on modern technology, we teach practical survival concepts which will help you in the event of today's local emergencies: ice storms, car troubles, getting lost, floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, even "9/11" types of disasters. In the Winter Storm of 1993, dozens died in their own homes in some eastern states; we hear about hunters and tourists dying, lost in the wilderness. One of our goals is to give you the information you need to keep you and your family safe in the event disaster strikes.

From one-day seminars up to three-week intensive programs, learning survival skills will help you become more self-reliant in today's world of uncertainty and potential catastrophic emergencies. All survival programs are customized to your particular needs, and we can help you decide what course would best suit you.

Our most popular course is a combination of survival skills taught from a base camp with 1 to 3 days solo after basic skills have been learned. Students start with a few basic "items of comfort" and then move beyond that to a real "living-off-the-land" scenario out on the land. These are field-oriented programs, but we also cater to those who want to have the security of a well-stocked base camp, complete with tents, sleeping bags, etc.

There are dozens of survival schools in the West, but we invite you to choose Shines Living History Productions because Gray Wolf, Shines and our staff present survival concepts in a different light: the light of the skills your great-grandfathers used in forging a life in the New World… In the light of the skills of First Nation Peoples, the Indians who understood the ways of the Earth and shared these skills with Lewis and Clark and others who headed West. This historical platform makes our survival programs unique.

GENERAL LIST

Our survival classes may include

some or all of the following skills:

Fire (bow drills, hand drills, wood plow, flint & steel, modern options)

Water procurement and purifying (wilderness and modern techniques)

Shelters (emergency, brush, snow caves, igloos, wickiups, lean-to's, etc.)

Body Temperature (how to stay warm or cool)

Tools (torches, utensils, bowls, pipes, etc.)

Cordage (making thread, string and rope from plant fibers)

Cooking/Heating (campfire basics, baking, pits, smoking, sweat lodges)

Edible and useful plants (locating, identification, uses)

Traps/Snares (deadfalls, fish weirs, other techniques to procure meat)

Hunting Tools (spears, rabbit sticks, slings)

Knives & Axes (modern use, ancient percussion & pressure flaking)

Bow/Arrows (making a primitive bow and arrows with stone points)

Clothing (plant fiber, animal skins, brain tanning hides)

Earth-Land Ecology (consciousness/awareness of the web of life)

Cultural Heritage (legends & skills of native tribes; philosophies)

Animals, mammals, birds, insects, fish, etc.

Rocks/Minerals (finding useful stones & semi-precious rocks)