My other interests and experiences slowly coalesced into "being prepared". I was fortunate to live in Arizona as a child. My best friend was Apache, and we learned a few skills from his father. He was no Tom Brown "Stalking Wolf" mentor, but a modern cowboy. Then I enlisted in the Coast Guard and went to arctic, marine and desert (!) survival schools. In college I majored in Archaeology. I quickly appreciated that the"'Noble Savage" capable of living with mother earth with little more than a knife is a myth. Ditto the Rambo superman. Humanity is a tool using animal. It may be stone and sinew, but the oldest flint knife is a incredibly complex and sophisticated tool. We are all gearheads,from our most distant ancestors to the grandson recieving his first knife. It's the fella with a folsum point dart/ leatherman that survives the cavebear/power outage :0)