If you are fortunate enough to live within the native range of birch trees, then you have a lot of interesting survival options at your disposal. Birch can provide you with firewood and containers, and the right species of birch can even be turned into a tea and sweetener.

Fire
For friction fire building with birch, you can use the dead and dry branches for your drill and fire board. These materials are effective, but not quite as easy to use as willow or cedar. By far, the best fire related use of birch comes when you burn the papery curls as your fire starter. This birch paper is like a stepping stone between tinder and kindling. Whether wet or dry, these birch bark curls will burn strong, creating a black oily smoke. Any birch species that produces papery bark will be useable, but the white birch (aka paper birch) is the most effective. You’ll need an open flame like a match or lighter for best results in lighting the bark. Spark-based fire starting methods are not particularly effective for lighting the bark strips.

Dan and Kate Suski, along with an unnamed captain and first mate, are counting themselves lucky after they were forced to swim for their lives for more than half a day in the Caribbean waters off St. Lucia.

The brother and sister from San Francisco had chartered a boat to do some fishing last Sunday. When the 31-foot fishing vessel began to take on water, the siblings and crew had no choice but to abandon the boat. They put on their life jackets and jumped into the open water.

“It was completely surreal watching the boat stern go down, go subsurface underwater,” Dan said.

When you get cut out in the field, it can be hard to tell just how bad the injury is until the bleeding subsides. After applying pressure for a few minutes, and once you can actually see the nature of the wound, you’ll probably be wondering if the wound needs stitches or not? It’s a simple question, but it opens up a big gray area in field medical care.

The first advice I would give is the obvious advice, find a medical practitioner to make the call about either using stitches or simply bandaging up the wound. But if you are hell and gone from any normal medical care, or you are away from your group’s medic, you may have to make your own assessment. Just don’t “Rambo” your way through the wound’s care, trying to use fishhooks and foolishness to stitch yourself up. Make sure you have a proper suture kit and the knowledge to use it correctly.

When you are a long way from a dentist, and your teeth start giving you trouble, you’ll need a very specific set of medical items to bring yourself relief. With that very specific need in mind, the forward thinking folks at Adventure Medical Kits created the Dentalmedic kit.

This ultralight zip-top bag contains the essentials for treating dental ailments and injuries when no dentist is near. It could even be handy over a weekend trip, or anytime a qualified dentist isn't available. This 3.5-ounce kit contains: