How to Survive on the South Touchet

I bought a machete the other day, because I was fighting a war that I was losing and I needed a better weapon. (Actually I hadn't been doing much fighting, and the war was almost lost.)

It's a war against cattails: you know, those cute tall weeds with what look like long sticks with overcooked corn dogs on the end.

When we bought our property along the South Touchet River more than a decade ago, it had a pond. It was a lovely pond, with a few lovely cattails lining one shore, which made it even lovelier. But cattails aren't satisfied to look nice as a pond accent; they want to devour every square inch of whatever standing water you have. And then they die and turn brown and just stay there. Their descendents grow up amongst their dead parents and do the same thing. Soon you've got a giant dead cattail jungle, denser than the Amazon. Hence the machete.

This year I decided to reclaim the pond. In the summer the water's low enough that I can slog through it in waders and hack away at the base of the cattails. I occasionally get stuck, and when I do I rely on my survival skills.

My survival skills are quite good, I believe, because, as luck would have it, I didn't buy just any machete; I bought a Bear Grylls Parang Machete.

If you don't know who Bear Grylls is, he has a TV show in which he puts himself into horrible situations deep in the wilderness, on purpose, and then pretends to survive. (Since there's a camera crew along, I doubt that survival is actually in question, but it's popular on TV.) Anyway, he does things like eat rhino beetles and drink his own urine, which I'm sure gives his show outstanding ratings among teenage boys.

The machete is made by a company called Gerber Survival (which I assume is different than Gerber Baby Food). When you buy a Bear Grylls/Gerber Survival product, it comes with a pocket guide called "Priorities of Survival." It's a big piece of paper folded up real small, with lots of little diagrams and short instructions on how to cope with all kinds of perilous situations in the wilderness. It's been a valuable thing for me to have in my war with the cattails.

Here's what it says at the top of side one:

"So you're in a spot of trouble. Well, you aren't the first and you sure won't be the last - so have faith and keep your hope up - whether you make it out alive or not will largely come down to you: your attitudes and your actions."

In the guide there are instruction on how to make a lean-to or a snow pit for shelter, how to start a fire, how to trap rain water or dew and how to set traps for small varmints. There is also something that I actually found interesting: If you're in the northern hemisphere (which I am) and the sun is shining (which it usually is), you can figure out which direction north is using a (non-digital) wristwatch. You point the hour hand toward the sun and then draw an imaginary line with your brain bisecting the hour hand and the "12." That's south. The opposite direction is north.

Since I no longer wear a wristwatch, that knowledge won't do me any good, but I still found it interesting. Luckily, while I'm out in the pond waging war with the cattails, I can see my house. And that's approximately west.