The Wilderness Learning Center offers the following survival-related courses for 2010:
The cost for each course is $870. For more information, call 497-3179 or check out the Web site www.weteachu.com.
By DENNIS APRILL, Outdoor Perspective
On Saturday, Jan. 16, I packed up my small plastic ice-fishing sled loaded with camping gear and drove north to Chateaugay for the Wilderness Learning Center's annual winter weekend outing.
An hour and a half later, after trudging down a ⅔-mile, snow-packed trail, I entered the encampment — 15 tents, three dogs and 17 happy folks bantering around the campfire.
I was immediately greeted by the center's director, Marty Simon, and his wife, Agnes, both old friends; then I set up my own camp. In the outlying perimeter were domed tents and tipi-like tents with stove pipes as their center poles. My Ecotat bivy, more like a cocoon, made me look like I belonged on the poor side of that tent town, but for one evening I could deal with the cramped quarters.
The Ecotat I have is a military special-operations portable shelter made of Gortex-lined material that can be pitched, as I did, with shock-cord poles for a little headroom; it can also be used as a poncho, cagoule, stretcher or lean-to.
After setting up, I got a chance to talk with Marty and Aggie, who filled me in on the doings of that day. These winter camping trips are attended mostly by past students of the Wilderness Learning Center; many are police officers or retired police officers, plus a couple of the center's counselors — Bobby Plude from Ticonderoga and Kevin Estela from Connecticut. They all would camp through Monday before returning home, some coming from as far away as Pittsburgh, Pa., and Toms River, N.J. During some down time, I checked out the camp, set among tall bare hardwoods not far from the Canadian border.
Marty Simon has a long history of involvement in the outdoors, starting at age 9 as a Boy Scout 60 years ago. He also served in Vietnam, where he was sent to jungle survival school. In his 17 years of military service, many of those as an instructor, he attended Arctic and temperate survival schools. In 1984, just out of the military, he founded the Wilderness Training Center, which would later become the Wilderness Learning Center. His wife, Aggie, is from Putnam, south of Ticonderoga, and instructs in survival techniques besides helping with the cooking.
That Saturday was a mild one for mid-January, with temperatures in the low 30s. "Good," I said to myself, as I was prepared for 30-below.
Later, while Marty and I chatted near the campfire, he updated me on his courses. All are seven days; the cost is $870 and all meals are covered. Besides a winter survival course slated for Feb. 14 (see box), there will be summer courses on plant and wild edible identification, basic survival and advanced survival.
Dinner that evening included various hamburger concoctions wrapped in silver foil and set to cook at the fire's edge, along with foil-wrapped baked potatoes. I chose a burger loaded with hash browns and bacon. This was definitely not the "survival" fare I had expected, nor was it meant to be; campers relaxed on folding chairs near the fire and sipped their favorite beverages.
In this era of natural and manmade catastrophes and personal crises like getting lost or injured in the woods, knowledge of basic survival skills is a very good thing to have, and certainly the Wilderness Learning Center classes can provide these skills.
E-mail Dennis Aprill at daprill2000@yahoo.com, and check out our Web site at www.pressrepublican.com/0105_outdoor_perspective for more photos and past articles.
