Author: Ken Clarkson

I recently went on a bike ride through downtown Cambridge and Boston with my friend Rob who is what you'd call an "urban forager." Rob knows his local trees better than anyone I know. As we stopped to take breaks along our route, Rob was constantly pointing out city trees that produced local nuts, berries, fruits, and even coffee substitutes. Some of these trees had been planted by "guerrilla foragers," meaning savvy individuals who had taken it upon themselves to plant these trees in the cities as a source of food.

I couldn't help but think of the news I had read that morning about the war in Ukraine.

In the news piece, they discussed how residents were forced to cut down local trees in the cities to make cooking fires, and their food supply had been cut off with only a few days remaining.

It made me wonder— did they have local urban trees that they knew about that were sources of food?

Were there similar guerrilla foragers who had planted edible urban forests?

Were they forced to burn trees that supplied food?

I thought about how trees represent "survival" in some cultures, meaning that they can provide shelter, fire fuel, water (sap, rain-drip, and healthy groundwater), and food. It's no wonder that the proverbial Tree of Life is ubiquitous on many continents.

I also couldn't help but think about how here in North America, all major cities depend on transporting food from remote regions, and that major cities like New York and Los Angeles have only 4-7 days of food on the shelves to supply the population if transportation resources are cut off. This was a topic of a recent ninja blog.

But on this cold winter bike ride with Rob, my mind also wandered to the warmer climes where many people this time of year venture to escape the cold. When I thought of both survival food and warm tropical islands, the first thing that came to mind was the story that Dai Shihan Mark Roemke told me about the food on his island survival trip.

So, I'll let Sensei Roemke tell you the tale first hand...

A couple years ago I went on an island survival trip with Tom McElroy. This was a group survival trip to the island of  St. Croix. Before heading into the bush for our survival scenario, the instructors taught us local ways to make fire, how to identify edible plants, ways to make hunting tools, and how to construct a shelter using local materials. When we arrived at our location, the first thing that we did was focus on making our shelter because, if you have a shelter, you feel comfortable, which is key, especially with a group.

After we completed our preliminary training, we drove to a remote part of the island, then hiked several miles to our camp spot. Of the basic needs of survival: shelter, water, fire, and food, water was the one essential item that we brought with us to the site due to a lack of local fresh water.  It became very apparent early on that you need calories to have energy to simply walk around, to travel to the beach to gather food, to gather almonds, to crack almond nuts and process the seeds, and to gather sea parsley. It was really important to carefully choose the actions you would do each day because your mind doesn't work as well when you are extremely hungry. For example, if you think that you are just going to go hunt after a few days without food, you quickly learn that it is much harder than you think just to perform the basic physical motions.

By the end of the ten day trip I had lost over 30 pounds. I learned that every day when you wake up, the primary thing that you think about is this— where am I going to get food?

This thinking takes over everything else. All other concerns pale in comparison to finding food. It is key to know your local edible foods. It's paramount to know what plants are poisonous. Above all, you need to learn when and where to gather wild edibles and how to process them.

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Back on my bike in Boston, I started thinking about sticks. When I lived in Hawaii, there was a local "pig dog" that was semi-feral that occasionally roamed the dirt road that crisscrossed the native forest on the way to my home outside of Volcano Village. When I rode my bike home, the hound often lay in wait and would chase me at full speed while snapping at my heels. As a kid I remembered my dad, who lived his whole life with one dog or another, telling me, "every dog knows what a stick means." By this, he meant that some were "fetchers" but other aggressive types knew that it wasn't a good idea to mess with someone wielding a big stick. He didn't mean that you should hit the animal, but instead, all you needed to do was to raise the stick above your head and the animal would back off.

With this in mind I picked up a large ohia tree branch as I biked home one day. Just like clockwork, as I rounded a corner by an old abandoned barn, here came the snarling pig dog. As he approached my heels I raised my large stick overhead and snarled back. What happened next was somewhat of a blur. In raising my stick quickly, I instantly disrupted my steering balance and went head-first over my handlebars. I remember watching the dog run away as the world turned upside down, followed by a crash into a nearby koa tree. I remember lying on my back, looking up at a slowly spinning front wheel. The dog's face looked down at me curiously, tail wagging. I threw the stick across the field and he ran off to fetch it. We were buddies after that day.

As I hobbled home that day, I thought about sticks. I had just returned from a wilderness survival course in New Jersey. On the last day at that course, I asked the instructor, "what would be the first thing you'd do in a survival situation?" Without hesitation he looked me squarely and said...

"Get a stick!"

He went on to describe all the many uses of a stick in the wilderness— from making shelter, to tools, to fire, and especially for getting food.

Which brings me to today's training video. In the video below, Sensei Roemke demonstrates two ways of using a "throwing stick." This might be a scenario for self defense, or for getting food, such as knocking those island almonds out of a tree.

If you are someone who works with kids, check out our Ninja Mentor Lesson Plans. We have a specific plan that details how to teach the throwing stick skill below to youth.

Shelter is at the core of what gives us a sense of safety, security, confidence, and protection. It is central to the mindset of perseverance, which is one translation of the Japanese term "nin", as in ninja. Imagine if you will a disruptive scenario...

Picture an extreme weather event that suddenly sweeps through your home area. Let's say a hurricane or flood (or both) destroys your home. Beyond surviving the immediate event, a common reaction is the extreme emotional disruption caused by loss of a home. I'm sure you've seen this so many times in the news in recent years.

"We lost everything!" the voices say through tears on the news.

This scene unfortunately is playing out more and more each year with the changes occurring in our climate. It's a subject we covered in a recent blog, where we also discussed the value of the art of the ninja in dealing with this uncertain future.

But if you could put yourselves in these shoes, and imagine how you could prepare, adapt, and react, what would you do? As a former college athlete, our coach would routinely have us envision each race start to finish, so that when we actually competed, we had already been there. We had already achieved success in our minds. In Sensei Roemke's zoom classes, I often find myself training alone, having to imagine an invisible attacker. I find this often more valuable than training with a real partner as it develops my envisioning muscle. As a musician, I used to practice scales and songs with my hands invisibly on my desk in grade school algebra class.

My point is that practicing skills physically and mentally is key to developing the mindset when the skills are really needed.

In the survival skills teaching circles, some refer to a "sacred order" of survival skills: shelter, water, fire, food.

There's lots of debate though about what is the first thing you should approach. Typically the landscape dictates which should come first. For example, if the temperature is sub-zero with a windchill, you might need to focus on fire. If you were lost in a desert environment, you likely would want to focus on water as a top priority. We interviewed survival skills specialist Tom McElroy for a ninja blog. I like his approach in one of his training videos where he sets up a water drip catchment system (from wild grape vines!) and then sets to work on a debris shelter. By time the shelter is done, he's thirsty. And guess what...there's a full bark container of fresh water waiting.

My personal preference for the "sacred order" starts with attitude, or perseverance. In general though, the idea of shelter-first is often a worthy consideration. The thinking behind this is that you can survive for days to weeks without food. You can survive a handful of days without water (depending on the climate and landscape), but you can die of exposure within hours without adequate shelter.

I remember learning this lesson many years ago when living in Hawaii. I was surfing at a river mouth north of Hilo on the Big Island. There had been a recent storm and lots of cold fresh water was rushing into the small bay where I waited for waves. Within a very short time my whole body was shaking and my fingernails were purple. I kept thinking, "How is this possible? I'm in Hawaii?!" When I tried to unlock my truck later, my hands were shaking so hard that I had a very difficult time getting the key in the slot. As I warmed up with the heater cranking in the front of the truck, I thought about how fast my body can lose heat, even in Hawaii.

Learning to make a debris shelter changed my perspective on how to connect to a landscape, and what I truly needed to survive and be happy. I first learned this skill at a Tom Brown Tracker School course in California. We didn't actually build shelters at the course, but were instructed in the basic technique. The mission was to return to our home turf and try building one. If we returned for the follow-up course, then we would build and sleep in our shelters for an entire week.

I returned to Hawaii. The location where I opted to try this skill was a friend's property in a native koa forest at an elevation of 4500' on the side of Mauna Loa.It is a wet place. I mean, really wet. It gets over 150 inches of rain some years. I knew it would be a challenge to stay dry and warm (the temperature dipped into the 40's at night).

Despite lots of lush vegetation, the Hawaiian upper elevation wet forest did not provide the most ideal material in the form of debris on the ground. Plant material quickly decomposes under such wet conditions. I remember making an extremely leaky, damp, cold shelter that just wasn't going to work for the night.

I ended up sleeping under a tarp.

I was hungry too because my attempts to find wild edibles were dismal. There are few native plants at that elevation that are sufficient for the human digestive system. I remember falling asleep, hungry, under my tarp wondering how the native Hawaiians made shelter at these elevations in the past. My answer would come a few years later. But that's another story about water and shelter. I'll save that one for later.

I returned to the Pine Barrens of New Jersey the following year, excited to build a debris shelter at the follow-up survival training course at the Tracker School. It was October and there were dry leaves everywhere! I worked on my shelter for 2-3 days in between lectures and other skills workshops. By time I was done, I had a giant mound of leaves and sticks about five feet high. I had made a door to keep the wind and rain out. I had even woven a reed mat as a sleeping pad. Thinking that the sound of the dawn chorus of birds would wake me, which usually happened in my tent, I went to sleep the first night without setting an alarm. My shelter was so soundproof that the next morning when I crawled out, I realized that I had not only missed breakfast, but the first lecture.

On the third night a huge storm hit. I could faintly detect the sound of thunder from inside my shelter. There was a torrential downpour as well, yet I stayed dry and warm. I didn't need a sleeping bag because of the warmth of all of the leaves.

On the fifth night I decided to sleep in my adjacent tent for comparison. The tent flapped all night long. I remember looking at the thin nylon walls, seeing my breath, and feeling so cold in my sleeping bag. I returned to my debris shelter for the rest of the week and slept happily.

Sleeping in that debris shelter changed the way I viewed my camping relation to the outdoors. I felt the confidence that I didn't need a sleeping bag or tent, and if needed, I could make a comfortable shelter with just the materials from the forest around me. But most important for me was the deep sense of connection and gratitude– the feeling that the Earth provided me everything I needed for shelter.

Not only was it a really fun, engaging activity of building this structure alone in the forest, but it instilled a deep sense of confidence within me that I liken to the positive attitude that martial arts training teaches. The feeling being– that if the proverbial dooky of doom really hit the fan, and I found myself in a desperate situation without shelter, I knew that I could at a bare minimum build a shelter from the landscape, and be engaged in doing so as a challenge instead of succumbing to panic.

Unless I was at 4500' on Mauna Loa. Then, I'd need another technique. But I digress again...

Since then, I have taught this skill countless times to youth and adults. It's amazing to watch kids build shelters. Go into any forest that abuts a neighborhood and you are likely to encounter piles of ramshackle sticks leaning against trees, a result of local kid's innate drive to build shelters in the forest. There's something deeply embedded within us that resonates with this skill.

At a Wilderness First Responder course, I remember an instructor discussing the idea that a lost child has a better chance of survival than an adult because most young kids have an instinct to seek shelter under bushes or leaves, whereas many adults panic and die of exposure.

One of our favorite ways to introduce the basics of making a debris shelter is to create a "head shelter." This is a small scale version that incorporates all the essential components of a debris shelter: ridge pole, ribs, lattice, and debris. It's basically big enough to stick your head into.

But, to make it a little more challenging, we throw in the "water test." What?!

The goal is to make a head shelter with enough debris that when a full water bottle is poured over the top, that the person's head inside the shelter stays dry. Or, if you are really brave...go for a gallon jug of water.

Once this shelter is learned, it's simply a matter of scaling up the size to fit an entire body.

This is a great one to do with a pack of ninja kids in the backyard. They especially enjoy pouring the water over the adult shelters.

We also talk about disappearing the shelters when done using them, to return the landscape to its prior condition. A good, sneaky ninja leaves no trace. But sometimes we have used these shelters to stash our dry fire wood on the periphery of our "ninja camps."

Below is a tutorial video showing one way to make the head shelters.

Because we are ninjas, we of course go hiking in the forest and use our hand-made hanbos for the ridge pole. Ninja secret– a full length rokushaku bo makes and awesome full size ridge pole for a debris shelter. But, if you find yourself in the forest without your hanbo or rokushaku bo, a tree branch will work.

Good luck with your head shelter!