Finding and Purifying Water

Water is extremely important; you can only go three or four days without it. If the water isn't clean, you could be poisoned or infected with disease. There are many natural sources of water; you just have to be near them and know how to tap and purify them.

Lakes, ponds, streams, and rivers can be dangerous. If they're stagnant, harmful microorganisms can grow in them. If they're running, they may carry poisons from civilization upstream. Springs and wells are somewhat safer, but be careful. Some people say that on the beach, well away from the shore, you can dig a well behind a sand dune, scooping out the muddy water until it turns fresh. Never drink seawater, which contains so much salt it will only make your thirst worse, and never drink urine.

You'll probably want to at least strain whatever water you can find through some cloth, to remove some particles, or boil it for six minutes, to kill microorganisms. Some people have strained water through activated charcoal and plant matter, but I don't yet have information on this. Boiled water tastes flat, but can be improved by pouring it from one container into another repeatedly, or by shaking it in a sealed container.

Rainwater and dew tend to be cleaner than groundwater, although today pollution is making them less safe in some areas. In the early morning you can drink dew off of the plants or off of a sheet or tarp you have spread out to catch it. To collect large amounts of dew quickly, wipe a cloth over the dewy plants and squeeze it into a container. Be careful what plants you collect dew or rain off of; grass and edible plants that haven't been sprayed or treated are safest. Rainwater drunk from spicebush leaves is especially delicious, like cold spicebush tea, and I would imagine that other leaves and flowers lend flavor to the water they hold as well.

Snow and ice can be melted for drinking water, but may not be totally clean. Snow is likely to contain dust, along with the pollutants found in rain, and ice is only as clean as the water source it came from and the surface it formed on. When melting snow, never put it in a pot directly over a fire, as it may absorb the water that melts from it and cause the pot to burn.

Ice from the sea slowly loses its salt content, so the longer it has been frozen, the purer it becomes. Even if the surface tastes salty, the inside is probably more pure.

Some plants have plenty of water in them that you can tap into. Fruits like watermelon and orange are well-known examples. You can also chew thistle stems (being careful of thorns), tap certain kinds of trees (as you would maples) for their watery sap, cut grape vines high on the vine and drink from them, and mash the insides of barrel cacti to release their water. (Barrel cacti are not common and grow slowly, so don't do this unless you have an emergency.)

You can purify almost any water, even seawater or urine, by making a still, if you have the right materials. Put a small, clean, empty container inside a larger container with dirty water in it. Tie a piece of clean plastic on top of the larger container and put a stone in the middle of the plastic to make it point down into the smaller container. Leave the two containers in the sun or in a warm place for many hours. The water will evaporate from the larger container, leaving the dirt behind, and condense on the plastic. Then it will drip down into the smaller container, yielding a small amount of clean water. This still has many variations. For instance, you could have two cooking pots over a fire, one inside the other, with an inverted lid on top; or you could have a hole in the moist ground in a sunny area, with a cup inside and a sheet of plastic over it.

The information in these pages is accurate to the best of my knowledge, but I make no guarantees about its accuracy, nor do I take responsibility for any damage or injury caused by use or misuse of this information.

Much of this information was taken from The Complete Wilderness Training Book, by Hugh McManners.



Building Shelter | Finding and Purifying Water | Important Wild Plants | Starting Fires