Kevin Estela is an expert in the skillsets of survival and bushcraft. You’ll recognize his name as a contributing author to the Cadre Dispatch, among others.
Estela’s passion for wild places started at an early age. He was inspired in part by his father, who, as a young man during World War 2 escaped occupying Japanese forces with his family by living in a cave in the Philippine jungle for several years and surviving off the land.
He’s an instructor and a teacher who travels the U.S. and abroad chasing adventures and putting outdoor products to real-world use. “His goal is to inspire people to overcome adversity and hardship in their lives and live well with purpose.”
Estela’s good book, titled Beyond the Field, Taking Wilderness Skills to the Next Level, is chock-full of well-thought-out and interesting information on surviving in the wilderness.
Chapters cover just about anything you’d need to know to successfully endure in the backwoods. Some are normal items many would consider “ordinary,” but other topics force one to think about the realities of seeking out good training, practice, and education needed about survival and woods craft. A proper mindset for traveling about and living in the great outdoors is well explained.
For example, a variety of cutting tools and their uses are covered, but Estela goes deeper into the subject, explaining how to sharpen an axe, proper storage, and how to make a new handle in the woods if your axe handle breaks.
Backpack essentials are important, and his suggestions for what to carry will save you the trial and error of figuring it out the hard way. Need-to-know topics like camp cooking, food preservation in the field, camping and surviving in winter, proper clothing, tips on canoeing, health & hygiene in the outdoors, fishing, hunting, and marksmanship are explained.
Estela also goes into interesting topics like land navigation, off-road mobility, and vehicle extraction. There’s much more covered in this tome, such as purpose-driven gear, footwear, platform fires in snow, building a fish trap, emergency rappelling, and the list goes on! There is also a section on Tips and Tricks for the Educator.
For many of us, our daily lives of convenience do not necessitate survival skills or even basic woods skills that were more common among our grandparents in their younger days in rural America. Beyond the Field will bring you up to speed and offer sound advice for amateurs and seasoned pros.
Today, we see a welcomed resurgence of folks enjoying the great outdoors. It is imperative to understand that things can go wrong in the wild. Mother Nature is beautiful, but she can kill you. Having the proper mindset, tools, and knowledge to survive is vital.
I’ve helped search for people who became lost while hiking. Thankfully, they were found and survived. Unfortunately, that is not always the case. Knowing the important information detailed in this book can better prepare you to save your life and the lives of others.
I recommend reading this good book and the author’s best-selling predecessor, 101 Skills You Need to Survive in the Woods. You’ll find some great information within these pages, no matter if you’re striking out on a two-hour trail hike or trekking off into the wilderness for two weeks of solitude. You can tell the source of information therein is from someone who has been there, done that.
Tips, how-tos, and tricks of the trade will help make your next adventure in the wild more enjoyable. Some of them might even save your life.
