Vital Survival taught by Craig Caudill
I’m always wary of online courses, some have been excellent and others have burned me. I sit here on a cold wet day after almost three months in a leg brace and walking frame going a little stir crazy after running out of books and decided to give Vital Survival a go.
The course covered the basics of gear essentials, personal assessment and mindset development, personal and group security, individual first aid kits, sheltering in place and sheltering on the move, water procurement, food procurement, communication and critical decision making, along with practice vs training, included are intro to edible and medicinal plants and knots.
I went through most of the course in a day and a half however Im sitting here with no other entertainment other than my staffy harassing me for attention. For someone that works and has little spare time most of the sessions last between 10 to 20 minutes and can be covered one or two a night. Therefore the $99 USD or $140AUD yearly subscription would be worth it. I paid the monthly or $15AUD rate.
Ive done a lot of training so much of the material I had done before including the edible and medicinal plants section which is a stand alone course on the Outdoor Core website. However i still found it entertaining and lots of material was covered. To someone that hadn’t done any outdoor training I would highly recommend it and it is one of the cheapest courses that I have found on the net.
If I learn just one thing from a course that I haven’t seen before I’m happy. However Craig has set me on another path that I wasn’t interested in previously to doing Vital Survival and that is more along the lines of Outdoor Leadership. Several sections of the course involved talking about critical decision making and self development. Which I found very interesting.
I’m now on a path of looking more into mindset and growth patterns in terms of advice such as read, study, learn, continue to grow. Its also interesting seeing teaching methods from other wilderness instructors.
“Its just a thing” Dealing with stress techniques that I came away with, that hit me the most. I’m also looking into a book Called Left of Bang. See link below. So Ive spent six hours and came away looking into a different part of Bushcraft that never interested me before. That is something that excites me!
I look forward to seeing what additions are made to the courses in the future.
“This life will never be without storms. Stop fearing the storm. Build your inner shelter”.
Yasmin Mogahed
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