More about me and my skills.

Whew! That was a long one, wasn't it? Well I'm not done. ;)

So... What got me started on this path? Hard to say really. Even when I was a young kid, I felt drawn to the outdoors. My earliest recollection is memories of my dad talking me for walk in the parks, reading to me. I also remember when I lived in Arazonia of playing in the drainage ditches (during the dry season of course) and being upset that they wouldn't take me to the "play area" because the mountains were getting rain. Hey, to a little kid it made no sense, It was sunny and dry and the mountains were very far away. I DO remember my parents bringing me to the park that was near the drainage ditches and hearing a roaring sound that instinctively felt was dangerous. My dad brought me near the ditches but not that close and showed me why they didn't want my to play in the ditches when the mountains got rain. What I saw terrified me. The whole ditch was a mass of rushing frothing water, roaring and hissing. I have a feeling my dad showed me this because I must've been a brat when I couldn't play in the ditch a few days back.
But what really put the wild bug in me, was a book I read when I was in the forth grade. For the life of me I don't remember too much about it, much less the title. I do remember it was a badge brother and sister who made their own dens and wanted to throw a party for their friends who weren't able to make it. The brother was sad about that and cooked up some bacon and decided to widen his burrow to take his mind off of being sad. As he dug, he accidently tunneled into his sisters burrow who was having a tea party for her stuffed animals as he friends didn't show up. Long story short, they decided to have a brother and sister party. But what got me was I wanted to make a fort or something like that.
Fast forward a few years later, I discover a book that completely changed my life and set me on the path I walk on today. That book is My Side of The Mountain by Jean Craighead George, but I didn't discover it right away. If anything it was during reading class and had to read short stories. Well, I was bored out of my mind, when we had to read a short story called Sam Gets Started. It was from the second chapter of that book, but I was floored. The skies opened up, light shown down and I wanted this book. I WANTED it bad! So I went to the library and searched naively for a book Sam Get Started, but failed. I looked up the authors name and went to the book section and didn't find it. Instead I found My Side of The Mountain. Ok, this looks cool I thought. I started to read it and I was hooked, and when I got to the second chapter I discovered this was what I was searching for, and got detention for jumping up and down whooping. I WAS in the  school library after all.
From there I read it over and over, wanting to know how to live like that. Then one of my friends introduced me to Tom Browns Field Guide to Wilderness Survival. Between those two books I read them and learned and tried out everything I could.
Years later on, after graduation from high school and recovering from a abusive relationship, I decided to take classes from the Tracker school. I took a number of the survival classes, and when I discovered other schools, I took classes from them when I could
I learned what I could and taught when I could. I then helped form the Mid-Atlantic Primitive Skills Group known as MAPS.
Years on, I had the wonderful opportunity to join the late Ron Hood and his wife Karen on a survival trek in the remote area of Idaho and was in their survival camping video. https://survival.instantestore.net/pd_wm_vol_10.cfm
Had a great time, even at my expense. ;)
But this is the basic gest of it all about me and my skills.
Going to see if I can include a about me video in this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0o-PCLO5_E4&t=5s