Favorite wilderness survival books

Liam Ryan

Liam Ryan

Joined
Sep 26, 2005
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The Jeremiah Johnson thread had a few reccomendations for literature, but I am always looking for more, so to keep the other threads integrity I started this thread.

Fiction

"hatchet" by Gary Paulson. I read it when I was young, and it probably started my fixation. I have yet to read the rest of the series, but hope to get around to it.

Any more survival fiction would be much appreciated



Non - Fiction

One Man's Wilderness: An Alaskan Odyssey - the adventures of Dick Proenneke, based the text on the journals and photography of Richard Proenneke, who, after racking up years of 50-hour work weeks, did what many of us only fantasize about: he chucked it all and went to live in the woods. He lived in a remote cabin in Alaska until he was 82, in a logcabin he built with basic hand tools.


"Into the Wild" is the great work of jon Krakauer, about an upper class boy who leaves it all behind and roams the country, eventually making it to Alaska living on his own in the wild.


Adrift: 76 Days Lost at Sea - on the New York Times bestseller list for more than thirty-six weeks, a riveting firsthand account by the only man known to have survived more than a month alone at sea.

Never Cry Wolf : Amazing True Story of Life Among Arctic Wolves
Classic, and the movie was great too.


"How-To survival"


Primitive Wilderness Living & Survival Skills: Naked into the Wilderness

Most of these books are interchangable and few add anything new, but this one includes flintknapping, bowmaking, atlatl making, pottery, basket making,
and many more intersting subjects. It can devote whole chapters to these because it assumes you already have basic survival skills, just want to add to them. Check it out by all means.



To read list

Coming into the Country - John McPhee
looks like a great read, Amazon is great but it's making me broke.
 
I think the book that did it for me was "Ernest Thompson Seton's America". He was English-born, transplanted to Canada and was a naturalist and prolific writer on nature and woodcraft:

http://users.aol.com/randywoo/bsahis/seton.htm

I was a Boy Scout at the time my parents gave me this book for Christmas, and I also was an avid reader of my Dad's cast off copies of Popular Mechanics, where I found an article about how to build a survival kit into a band-aid tin. And of course I made one.

Off topic, but another writer - poet actually - everybody here should read, IMHO, is Robert W. Service, another Englishman moved to Canada. In my mind, he is the Rudyard Kipling of North America. Do any of you recall his famous poems, "The Shooting of Dan McGrew" or "The Cremation of Sam McGee"?

And the third, was Robert Ruark, who used to write for Field & Stream back in the '50's. He had a column called "The Old Man And The Boy" where he related great tales about him and his grandfather hunting and fishing together down south. Ruark also was a big game hunter in Africa. A great readable writer.
 
The Cremation Of Sam McGee

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.

Robert Service


...and that's just how it starts.
 
I guess I would consider the "Mountain Men" of the early 1800's to me my ideal of historical examples of survival in the wilderness. These men, for the most part, were not artists and writers, so what is really known about them survives in stories handed down by their contemporaries such as the Campbells, Subletts, Fre'mont, the owners and organizers of the fur brigades, and of course, the surviving records of items they purchased and supplied to the trains for the rondevous. Hudson Bay Company records are wonderful resources too, since they were so meticulus in record keeping. The best writers of early western fiction have been collectors, travelers, and historical researchers, as well as accomplished wordsmiths. The "king" of this genre, would IMHO be Terry C. Johnston (1947-2001). He was a prolific writer, and wrote several series. My favorites deal with a main charactor named Titus "Scratch" Bass.

Dance on the Wind
Buffalo Palace
Crack in the Sky
Carry the Wind
BorderLords
One-Eyed Dream
Ride the Moon Down
Death Rattle
Wind Walker

A lot can be learned from Terry's fictional writing. A lot about nature, and the nature of man.


Codger
 
 
These are a few I wouldn't want to give up:

Survival Skills of Native California, Paul D. Campbell, Gibbs Smith, 1999, ISBN# 0-87905-921-4

The Best of Woodsmoke, Richard L. Jamison, Horizon Publishers, 1982, ISBN# 0-88290-203-2

Indian Fishing - Early Methods on the Northwest Coast, Hilary Stewart, Douglas & McIntyre Ltd., 1982, ISBN# 0-88894-332-6

Outdoor Survival Skills, Larry Dean Olsen, Chicago Review Press 1990, ISBN# 1-55652-084-0

Primitive Outdoor Skills, Richard L. Jamison, Horizon Publishers, 1992, ISBN# 0-88290-263-6

Woodsmoke, Richard & Linda Jamison, Menasha Ridge Press, 1994, ISBN# 0-89732-151-0

Northern Bushcraft, Mors L. Kochanski, Lone Pine Publishing, 1987, ISBN# 0-919433-51-0

Survival Arts of the Primitive Paiutes, Margaret M. Wheat, University of Nevada Press, 1967, ISBN# 0-87417-048-6

Desert Survival Skills, David Alloway, University of Texas Press, 2000, ISBN# 0-292-70492-5

Primitive Technology - A Book of Earth Skills, Society of Primitive Technology, Gibbs Smith, 1999. ISBN# 0-87905-911-7

Bushcraft, Richard Graves, Schocken Books, 1974, ISBN# 0-8052-0333-8

Bushcraft, Ray Mears, Hodder & Stoughton, 2002, ISBN# 0-340-79258-2

Outdoor Survival Handbook, Ray Mears, Ebury Press, 1992, ISBN# 0-09-1878861

U.S. Air Force - Search & Rescue Handbook, Dept. of the Air Force, The Lyons Press, 2002, ISBN# 1-58574-555-3

Wildwood Wisdom, Ellsworth Jaeger, Shelter Publications, 1992, ISBN# 0-936070-12-9

Doc
 
I am reading Tom Brown's set right now as well as SERE military manuals I had when I was in but didn't get to read it all.

S/F,
CEYA!
 
Liam
Coming into the Country is a great read. Back in the eraly 80's I was so taken with the book that I went out to the Alaskan community, Eagle AK. where McPhee writes from and hung out with the characters that he met and wrote about. My brother and I spent 2 weeks on the Yukon River working with those folks. I still keep up with one family and get news every so often. The hey day of the "river people" is over. The feds have seen to that. Too much freedom makes some nervous and the need to restrict always seems to follow.
A book about the last true river or bush family still living unrestricted is "The Final Frontiersman" Great book.
 
I like the Gem SAS Survival Guide (Wiseman), and Army Field Manual 21-76 is useful too.
 
Think this one deserves a bump.
Not much to do in the wild but look at the fire or read a book,
may as well be a book that could save your hide someday.
 
Fiction:
Louis L'Amour - "Last of the Breed" and the short story "With These Hands" in the book of the same name.
 
My wife wanted me to read this one, it is a good book.

Lost in the Wild
Cary J. Griffith

Helle
 
here is a longterm wilderness living book:

"my side of the mountain"
"the far side of the mountain"
"frightful's mountain"

by jean craighead jorge

great books. i read the first when i was 8/9 years old, and ever since then i have been outside.
 
I am bumping this......third time I went searching for it and it was almost gone....great info...it should be a sticky:thumbup:
 
Coldwood said:
The Cremation Of Sam McGee

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.

Robert Service


...and that's just how it starts.
Click to expand...

"..Please shut that door.
It's fine in here, and I greatly fear,
you'll let in the cold and storm.
Since I left Plumtree down in Tennessee -
It's the first time I've been warm!"
-From "The Cremation of Sam McGee" By Robert Service's Spell of the Yukon

I forgot about that! Thanks for the reminder! Great stuff!

As for my library:
Camping and Wilderness Survival, Paul Tawrell
Wilderness Survival, Tom Brown (part of his "Field Guide" series)
Wilderness Survival, Gregory Davenport
As well as some Mountain Warfare School texts and "Multiservice Procedures for Survival, Evasion, and Recovery"

AND for Map and Compass work:
Be an Expert with a Map and Compass, Bjorn Hjellstrom
 
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