Joy Colangelo

When You Are Lost: What foraging maxims can teach us about survival Joy Colangelo

This guidebook presents foraging maxims to focus our decision making, giving us the best chance of survival if lost. If you can accurately identify plantain, you've found one of the most useful plants in the forest. But if you know that all square stemmed plants are edible, you've increased your edible plant list from one plantain to 7,000 species of plants. This one maxim is the first step toward curing nature blindness.

Inside are the "tips and tricks" used by survivalists, hunter/gatherers, witches and wildcrafters. The watercolor drawings are pulled straight from the authors' sketchbook with pigments made from ores, soil, coffee, walnut and avocado pits, rust, and lichens. The paper is wood pulp and the type of ink is soy. In fact, this very book is edible.

We can navigate life's challenges, both emotional and physical, by learning what survivors know. Survivors of life and death situations make the decision to be found wherever they find themselves and they know that when they find themselves lost, all is not lost. They are able to navigate by reading the forest, are nimble when faced with the unexpected, and can successfully emerge from an experience that threatens their emotional and physical life. Find out what survivors know.