At Home in the Wilderness

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DEW

Collecting dew is probably the simplest, and safest, way to obtain potable water in a survival situation, and it's the method I most frequently use and recommend to my students.

The only equipment needed to gather dew is a rag or a piece of clothing . . . or a handful of dried, nontoxic, grasses. Just wipe the moisture from the landscape and wring the liquid into a container or your mouth. Collect the condensed droplets from grass, rocks, leaves, and even sand. (Do not, of course, gather moisture from poisonous plants, near a highway or a city, or in any area that's been sprayed with chemicals.)

You'll have to get up early and work hard (dew doesn't stay around very long!), but don't let the simplicity of this method lead you to believe that it's ineffective. Students of mine have collected more than a quart a day in some of the hottest Southwest deserts . . . and at my farm in New Jersey, two pupils once used this technique to fill a 20-gallon garbage can with water in less than two hours!

By the way, although dew is an excellent water source as is, the same cannot be said for snow. Now whenever I tell my students to avoid eating snow, they look at me as if I were crazy, but the fact is that it takes a lot of body energy to melt snow . . . and, in cold weather, a survivalist can't afford any extra drain on his or her stamina.

It's best to melt snow or ice and warm the water slightly before ingesting it. You can do so by building afire and digging depressions in the snow nearby to collect the fluid . . . dropping a heated rock into a container of snow . . . or just putting a flake-filled cup in a snow pit and covering it over with pine or fir boughs (sunlight on the dark needles will eventually melt the snow in the cup).

BE CAREFUL, BE SAFE

As you must be beginning to realize, water can be simply and safely obtained in any survival situation . . . provided you follow the necessary precautions. Whenever you examine a newfound supply, ask yourself, "Would I stake my life on this water?" . . . because that's what you'll do if you drink it!

If you find yourself in a situation where you have a limited reserve of water, conserve your supply to the utmost by following these few simple rules: Don't eat anything if you don't have water to drink with it . . . by consuming food you'll burn up your body's supply of the vital fluid all the quicker. Travel only during the coolest hours and walk at an easy pace so that precious moisture doesn't get used up through perspiration. Don't drink urine (unless you've first purified it by means of a solar tilt) because doing so will increase your body's rate of dehydration. And last, try to store as much water as you can in your stomach. People have died with full canteens as a result of trying too hard to conserve their water supplies.

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