78 Grimoire for the Apprentice Wizard
Water
MoccasinRattlesnakeCopperheadCoral
SnakeScarlet
King Snakeany way. Just stay out of its way, and it’ll stay out of
yours. Rattlesnakes even give you a warning buzz,
which you’ll recognize instantly once you’ve heard
it! Make plenty of noise when you walk through the
woods, and carry a walking stick to poke the bushes
ahead of you.Camp Cooking
Every woodsman should know a few basic meals
that can be prepared in the wild and cooked over a
campfire. A camp cooking fire is built very differ-
ently than a fire made for sitting around, as it is de-
signed to maximize heat, not light. Most cookfire de-
signs use a narrow trench cut in the ground, where
layer after layer of larger and larger sticks are laid in
the same direction and burned down to coals. One
excellent design uses an X-shaped trench, so that air
can circulate through the fire. Pots
and pans can be rested on
the bank above the
trench, or on
stones. Or build
your cookfire
between two
logs, like so:Making Shelter
The experienced woodsman should be able to
make survival shelters completely from scratch. The
easiest kind to make are those that take advantage of
natural objects such as caves, overhangs, cliffs, rock
faces, large trees, downed trees, or large roots. Start-
ing with any of these, you can build a lean-to by prop-
ping long logs, branches, or other downed trees against
them. Thatch the roof with layers of leafy boughs and
branches for protection from rain. Large evergreen
trees often have a tent-like interior (or even burned-
out hollows in the case of redwoods) that can be added
to and adapted into a cozy
shelter.Task: Make a Personal
Survival KitEvery good woodsman (and every good Wizard who
goes out into the woods) should assemble a personal
survival mini-kit. I made my first one when I was a
boy and always kept it with my camping gear, in my
pocket when I was hiking. Here’s a basic plan, adapted
from the Boy Scout Fieldbook:Lesson 7: Woodcraft
Woodcraft refers to all the skills that can enable you
to go into the wilderness and survive for months at a
time. You may never have to resort to them for sur-
vival, but I think a good Wizard should know these
things; I do. When it comes down to basic survival,
your most important woods tool is your knife. Get a
good one, and keep it honed to razor sharpness. Keep
it folded or sheathed when not in use, and avoid nick-
ing the edge or breaking the point.
There are several excellent handbooks for camp-
ing and wilderness survival, which will tell you ev-
erything you need to know. I highly recommend you
get one of these and take it with you on every camp-
ing trip. My favorite is the 2nd Edition Boy Scout
Fieldbook, published in 1967 and 1978. Later ver-
sions, unfortunately, seem to have dropped much of
the woodcraft and wilderness survival lore.Snakes
There are only four
kinds of poisonous
snakes in North Amer-
ica, and you should learn to
readily identify any of them.
Three are pit vipers, and
they all share common
features: triangular heads,
thin necks, thick bodies,
and diamond-shaped
markings all down their
backs. These are water
moccasins, copper-
heads, and rattlesnakes.
There is only one spe-
cies of copperhead and
one of water moccasin, but there are eight different
species of rattlers in the U.S.
The fourth kind
of North American
poisonous snake is
an elapid, related to
cobras. This is the
coral snake, of which there
are two virtually indistin-
guishable species—Eastern
and Western. They are
brightly colored in bands of
red, yellow, and black, and they look almost iden-
tical to the pretty scarlet king snake. There is a
simple rule to tell them apart, based on
the order of colors of their bands: “Red
and yellow, kill a fellow; red and black, venom lack.”
If you are at all unsure of whether a snake you
encounter may be one of the poisonous variety, don’t
mess with it! Don’t try to pick it up, kill it, or hurt it inWINDCooking
fireDeadfall
lean-
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