• Tweet
• 
• Sharebar

• Tweet
• 

For months now, I’ve been hinting that I’ve been hard at work planning for one AWESOME April series. It gives me goosebumps to finally unveil it with you. It just may be the craziest thing I’ve done on the blog. Or in real life. As in EVER. And I’ve done some pretty crazy stuff.

Gearing up for a CRAZY adventure

Henry David Thoreau, in his famous piece Walden wrote: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach…” In fact, he left his home to do just that. Live in the woods. He built a shelter, grew his own food, all without the modern conveniences we enjoy today.

Self reliance is such a buzz word today…but who actually LIVES it? Who actually up and says, “I’m going to reject all modern conveniences and move to the woods?” And a few months ago I had a lightbulb go off and said to myself, “if Thoreau can do it, well so can I.”

So for the month of April, my friends, this will be my new home:

All it needs is a few homey touches

I know some of you are freaking out right about now, thinking I’ve lost my mind or gone off the deep end. I assure you, I’ve made this decision very carefully. Some of the things I’ve done to prepare:

• Watched all episodes of Survivorman
• Consulted my doctor for physical and mental fitness for this challenge
• Taken a few survivalist courses
• Watched MANY YouTube videos on topics such as knot making, hunting, and first aid

Of course, this means that the blog will basically be on pause for the next month. I’m packing my FlipCamera with me and once a week, will be meeting with my husband briefly to check in on him and the kids, upload the video to my YouTube channel and share with you how I’m doing. But otherwise? I’ll be unplugged.

You might be wondering what I’m going to bring with me. I did decide on a few basic essentials to get me started.

Here’s what I’m bringing with and why:

• Backpack. This will keep everything on my person or at my homestead site neat & tidy. It contains a sleeping bag as well.
• Ice Axe. It seemed like a good idea to pack this with. I might not encounter glaciers, but there are coyotes in the woods I’m headed to and it seemed like a good idea to have something weapon-like.
• Food/water. I’m actually not packing much food, because I want to go whole hog as much as possible. I do figure it could take a couple days before I trap a squirrel or find edible mushrooms and roots, so I wanted to give myself a few calories until then, anyhow. I dug up a couple camp style meals and a couple thingys of Vita Coca. They have great potassium in them.
• Cookbook and Kindle. I checked out this Raw Foods cookbook at the library and it sure seemed appropriate given that I will likely be eating a lot of raw stuffs. I have also loaded my Kindle with great stories of survivalists: Native Americans, pioneers, Thoreau, Katniss Everdeen. You get the idea. Plus, it will be good to have something to read while I’m out in the woods. I charged the puppy up to 100%, so we’ll see if it actually gets me through the month or not.

I’m not bringing with my cell phone, laptop, Mr. Coffee (sigh), or money. Like I said, my husband knows where I will be and he will be checking in on  me once a week just to make sure everything’s on the up and up. After many long discussions, we just decided it would be best for him to stay at our house with the kids. I just didn’t think it would go over so well to pull them out of school for this.

Wish Me Luck!

Please do follow me on YouTube and keep an eye here on the blog for my weekly updates. Please, please keep me in your thoughts and prayers. While I’m reasonably confident Survivorman has nothing on me, who knows what the next month could hold in store…and with that I’ll sign off with….April Fool’s!

PS come back tomorrow for the REAL April Series announcement.