The Wilderness Survival Series continues this month at the Suffolk County Vanderbilt Museum in Centerport, where experts will highlight one of the most essential survival skills: making fire with friction.
The series resumes Saturday, Aug. 9, at 2 p.m., focusing on fire-starting basics. Tickets are $50 and available online at the Vanderbilt website.
Also on Aug. 9, the same two-hour program will be held at Sands Point Preserve in Sands Point from 10 a.m. to noon, and at the Center for Environmental Education and Discovery (CEED), a nonprofit in Brookhaven, from 6 to 8 p.m.
Long Islander Eric Powers, also known as Ranger Eric, described a friction fire—typically made using a spindle or bow—as one of the most difficult survival skills, but one widely practiced among indigenous cultures he has encountered. These include the Aborigines in Australia, the Masai in Kenya, Tongans in Polynesia and Native Americans in the Northeast.
“All these cultures are on different continents. They don’t really have any interaction and yet they all still use friction fire,” Powers told South Shore Press. “What we’re going to learn is how to use a bow drill to make a fire.”
September’s session, scheduled for Saturday, Sept. 13, will focus on making fire with sparks. “This is a more modern advancement of starting a fire,” Powers said.
Each class leads up to a 24-hour survival challenge planned for October that will test a variety of skills, including foraging and fire-building. Because it includes an overnight stay, the challenge will not take place at Vanderbilt. It is scheduled for Saturday, Oct. 11, at CEED and Saturday, Oct. 25, at Sands Point. Details are available on the CEED website.
Before launching the Wilderness Survival Series, Powers said he initially “jammed a ton of stuff” into a 24-hour survival class, which overwhelmed participants. During that early camping experience, he would “run everybody through a whole series of survival skills—and so we purify water, then we go foraging for food and then we make a fire, we learn how to make a shelter, but my feedback from that was, ‘Oh my God, in this 24 hours, you throw so much at us that my head is spinning. Is there any way to break it down?’”
That feedback led to a partnership with Michael Evans, founder of Forgotten Skillz, which promotes ancestral skills for sustainable living. Evans has been described as a jack-of-all-trades for his work in bushcraft, homesteading, foraging and woodworking.
Powers’ background in survival skills dates back to his youth in Colorado.
“I was always going on adventures” as a child, he said, prompting his mother to enroll him in survival training when he was about 15. “That kind of started my journey, my adventure with survival techniques, and I’ve used them in my life, now that I’ve become a wildlife biologist and I’ve done scientific studies in the deep Rockies and things like that.”
He is also the co-founder of Long Island nature center CEED and founder of the mobile nature company Your Connection to Nature, which offers live animal shows and eco-tours. He is the host of the award-winning TV series Off the Trail…with Ranger Powers.
The Wilderness Survival Series, a result of the Powers-Evans collaboration, is gaining attention. As technology increasingly replaces basic skills, Powers said, “when disaster strikes all that fails, and you’re left to lean back on your survival skills.”
That realization, he said, is fueling the popularity of the sessions, which he described as “really well-attended.” He added that it’s also fun to learn how Native Americans lived in the wild “because they were not just surviving; they were thriving!”
Attendees are advised to wear sturdy footwear and work gloves and dress for the elements. Survival knives, while not required, are helpful.
For more information, visit https://www.vanderbiltmuseum.org.