Practising Skills at Home

The skills you learn around the house can help you survive a camping trip. With the necessities of learning to start a fire, to build a shelter and to cook food from simple ingredients, you can begin practising for a trip to the wilds right in your very home.

Having a backyard barbecue may come as easy as plugging in your electric grill or burning charcoal with liquid and a cigarette lighter. However, you can practise going basic by replacing charcoal with wood. Practise igniting a fire by using matches, wood or flint. You can roast meat dishes or fish using this fire. Of course, before trying this out, make sure that your neighbourhood or local government permits this kind of activity in the backyard. If not, then go ahead and practise cooking using your good old grill. Find a way to make these dishes tasty even with the use of minimal spices, as you will obviously not be bringing your entire spice rack with you on your camping trip. Bring some salt and see if there are herbs or spices that you can pick from nearby plants. Be sure that you pick leaves or seeds from the right plants in order to avoid danger. Learn how to cook pork, beef, fish and birds, depending on what you are allowed to hunt in the camp site.

If your son or daughter has been begging you to build a fort, playhouse or tree house in your backyard, then now might be the time to do it. Go online and research on do-it-yourself (DIY) projects for the home. If you have no previous DIY experience, then it will be good to start with small projects like fixing your kitchen table or repairing your front door. Once you get the hang of it, look around for DIY kits that you can work on. You can also view video tutorials on the Web. Talk to a local constructor or carpenter to learn more about woodwork. When you finally decide on a design or a DIY kit, you can ask help from your best friend or your neighbour in building a fort, playhouse or tree house for your kid. This skill and knowledge will help you as you and your group construct a shelter for yourselves out in the wild.