10 Essential Skills for the Outdoorsperson - Explore Magazine Writers

10 Essential Skills for the Outdoorsperson - Explore Magazine Writers

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After reading this article, I have discovered that there are many essential skills for the outdoors that I didn't already posses that may prove to be quite useful in the future.

The article discusses many useful skills for the outdoors that include things as complicated as finding direction without a compass, to things as simple as setting up a tarp properly. The authors give very simple, yet clear steps that make it seem like a 5 year old could do everything on the list. The list includes skills crucial to survival like properly treating wounds and boiling water safe for consumption, and also skills that are more geared towards making your stay in the outdoors more enjoyable like how to hike further and faster.

I really enjoyed this article because it touched upon things that I already knew how to do, but described the steps more clearly and provided insight on how to do things more efficiently than I had previously known like the ‘How to build the perfect fire’ section. It also informed me on things I had no idea how to do like removing ticks and leeches, which is much more simple than I thought. Some of the tips provided in the ‘how to hike further and faster’ section would have undoubtedly been useful like using trekking poles, which is something I never considered to be very helpful. Another fascinating part of the article that I found very interesting is the ‘What to do when you run out of water’ section. I had never considered this method, which only uses evaporation to purify the water. I’ll try to give this method a shot next time I'm in need of some clean water and don’t already have a fire going to boil it.

Writers, Explore Magazine. "10 Essential Skills for the Outdoorsperson." Explore Magazine. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 May 2014. <http://www.explore-mag.com/10-essential-skills-for-the-outdoorsperson>.