Indigenous Ability

As the pandemic lockdown whiles on I have offered in dribs and drabs a few bits of functional knot-tying or rope/line-handling. These little mini-asides are meant to be eye-trivia for the bored or possible spurs to, “ Hell, I got time on my hands I’ll give this tip a go .” At the top end, there may even be, “ WTF! I really needed that tip when…oh, I’ll be ready next time.” Knot-tying, rope-handling, marlinspike seamanship, whatever you want to call the practice is, to my mind, more than just “That Old Man really likes tying knots.” [BTW-I do.] It serves a dual functional purpose to my mind. The First Purpose: The Convincing Argument Broad Based Survival & Functional Utility Able use of rope, cordage, lines, vines et cetera, next to the ability to build the variety of useful fires is THE most universal skill in many survival, extreme sport, outdoor domains. I capitalized the THE for factual emphasis, not mere preference. Where do we see the absolute...

[For the mindset behind the following see Part 1 .] The car plunges through the guard rail into the river below… The recreational boat sinks from beneath you at 2AM… The bridge long overdue for inspection fails beneath you… The proverbial “100-year flood” occurs and that formerly high and dry street becomes a strictured fast-water nozzle strong enough to sweep cars and humans… The non-swimming loved one is thrashing and flailing mid-water… Your “unsinkable” luxury liner sinks beneath as you sip brandy in the smoking-room… The ability to swim and maneuver well in water, or as the old-timers called it, being possessed of good watermanship, is of ultimate importance at these times. But…again we often fail to consider that even if we possess the vital skill of swimming, like all other endeavors, it is subject to state-dependent learning. That is, if we learn our combat skills in a nice, calm, no-worries zone that is in no way reflective of th...

I compose these brief notes while the unfortunateness of Florence takes aim at the East Coast. I offer it in the hopes that we may have it at the fingertips of our minds for as Seneca reminds us “ What has befallen one man may happen to all ” or as the Boy Scouts would say “ Be Prepared .”           The following ideas are gleaned from naturalist studies in river-dynamics, the frontier scout tradition, and an American Indian tactic or two. Keep in mind when we discuss river-fluid mechanics these same mechanics will hold for “concrete rivers,” that is, streets turned to river by flood. Rivers basically have two broad aspects to their composition Upland & Lowland. In the Upland portion the land is steeper and we find more energetic water. In the Lowland phase, it flattens out and at times we may see only a yard drop in elevation in a ½ mile of travel. The idea to keep in mind is that the faster or more energetic the flow the close...

Let’s take the concept of “Running the Gauntlet” as covered previously and apply it to the aquatic environment. Any serious reading of the historical record [ancient or modern] will be hard-pressed to find warrior cultures ignoring the ability of warriors to maneuver when in water. I’m not talking naval action whether it be a ship-of-the-line under full sail or small SEAL teams operating in a Zodiac boat. I am talking the ability of the individual warrior to maneuver, attack, and survive in the water itself on a solo basis. The solitary warrior’s ability to swim both on the surface and beneath the water, to do so with stealth or evasive action, to do so underload carrying or towing weapons, to efficiently assault beaches, to wisely and efficiently abandon sinking craft, to be able to resort to hand-to-hand close-quarter battle in a water-treading environment. All of these skills and tactics have been and are valued by warrior cultures. From today’s Navy SEALs to yesteryear’s ...