In the wilderness, short term survival depends on gathering water and making shelter. Long term survival will also depend on your ability to collect food. The easiest way to gather food is (yes, you guessed it) to find edible wild plants. Many plants do not take long to gather and are an easier food to acquire than building traps and snares to catch your food. I've never had a plant run away from me. Although, I did witness some plants climbing trees. Fortunately for me, it was a very s-l-o-w process. That certainly makes life a little easier than trying to catch something that doesn't want to be caught, doesn't it?

Learning about edible wild plants is not only an important survival skill, but an extremely satisfying way to bond with nature. In fact, once you learn a few common edible wild plants you will consider the outdoors to be a more hospitable place. For those who enjoy hiking up mountains, it will no longer just be about getting to the top to see the view. Rather, it will be about seeing all types of edible plants you never noticed before. Now all that greenery will have meaning and purpose... rather than just green stuff in your way.

We have all heard stories of people being rescued from the wilderness only to say they had 'nothing to eat for days'. This is a possibility unless you know your environment well enough to know what to eat. It takes seconds to panic, hours to get thirsty, weeks to starve, and if you survive, a lifetime to get over the embarrassment of starving in the forest while you were surrounded by edible wild plants.

Many people today have lost touch with nature. As far as we have come as a society, we have lost equally important life skills that even Apes and Cro-Magnon man (and woman) had; the knowledge to survive in the wilderness. It is partly due to a lack of knowledge and understanding that many people look at forests as just a wood farm for building houses and little else.

Did you know?

You don't need to travel further than your front lawn or neighborhood park to find edible plants. Most edible wild plants can be found in urban areas right outside your home. People usually see these plants as pesky weeds. Yet those 'weeds' have more nutrients than spinach, broccoli and most other domestic farm plants. Why not learn a few? You don't have to start eating them.... unless you're really hungry, but you can learn something useful just in case you need it some day.  It's like calculus, or advanced physics, or even first aid.  You learned it just in case you needed it in life! You may never need to use it but the knowledge is there... just in case.