I just read The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. I’ve spent a lot of my free time as of late lost in the world of Panem instead of on the computer. I’m not a huge reader but I just gobbled it up as well as the second book, Catching Fire. I’d recommend them if you don’t mind a little blood and fighting mixed in with a little love story.

This book made me think a lot about survival. I wonder how hard I’d fight to live or if I’d just let death come along and feel peaceful about it. I’ve always wanted to learn to survive off the land, forage and hunt. I mean, I think I’m kinda tough and wouldn’t might eating roasted squirrel for dinner but ya know, I’ve actually never done it so who knows. Would I just want to curl up and die? I wonder if I have what it takes to make it out alive. I also know very little about edible plants and I’ve never shot an animal before let alone skinned and gutted it (fish don’t count.)

The only survival skill I ever learned was to start a fire with a bow drill. I took a hiking and survival class in college. We went on a bunch of hikes and listened to our old man professor ramble on about how he could drink from the mountains streams because he had already had giardia. The only catch to the class was that we had to start a fire with a bow drill to get an A otherwise our grade would be a B. The drill was pretty tough to do and required just the right kind of wood as well as a bit of practice.

Bear Grylls makes it look like a piece of cake.

Once I was practicing in the apartment and I made it all smokey and some of my roommates came all unglued. What a memory. He he. But it was in the middle of winter and who wants to sit outside in the freezing cold cranking a stick back and forth hoping for a spark?

Not me.

Maybe I’m not that much of a survivor after all.