‘Be prepared. Always. Every time.’

The Nolichucky River begins as the confluence of the North Toe and Cane Rivers in Western North Carolina and winds its way 115 miles to join the French Broad River in Eastern Tennessee. At Erwin, Tennessee, it dips through one of the South’s deepest gorges, where a diminutive island survives the river’s beautiful yet relentless waters. 

Aptly named Survival Island, this is the home of the Nolichucky Outdoor Learning Institute’s survival class. Here you can study and practice the skills necessary for surviving life-threatening situations in the wilds. Perhaps, like me, you’ll have a blast doing it.

NOLI is Northeast Tennessee’s only comprehensive outdoor school, the passion project of founder and instructor Scott Fisher. Scott has been a certified white-water kayaking and swift-water rescue instructor for 15 years, and was the Safety and Education chairman of Appalachian Paddling Enthusiasts for about 10 years. A graduate of the Citadel, Scott served six years in the Army as an Airborne- and Ranger-qualified infantry officer. After the military he spent 20 years in corporate America before deciding he’d had enough. He wanted to spend the rest of his life doing something he loved. Nearly three years ago, NOLI was born. 

“The outdoors is where I feel most at home. It’s in my blood,” said Scott. His mission is to foster and promote a love of the outdoors, to help get people outside and back to basics. In a frenetic world where we’re hyper-connected and overstimulated, that’s something we could all appreciate. We tend to forget our roots, and sometimes we need to be reminded that shelter, food, and water are often all we really need.   

I arrived early for my morning class, met with Scott, briefly covered the day’s schedule, and we were off to Survival Island. We crossed the river with the help of a guy rope, and while the ford wasn’t deep or far, the current was powerful and the rocks slick. I managed the crossing without bathing in the Nolichucky. The dunking, I was to discover, was saved for my return. Yes, the water was cold.   

Class started as soon as we climbed out of the water. Scott began by pointing out useful plants, like Spicebush (Lindera benzoin), which has edible berries and leaves and a wonderful Allspice-like aroma, and Japanese Knotweed (Reynoutria japonica), which is an invasive species but has young shoots that are tender and edible. After a short hike we arrived at survival headquarters. An old military parachute was suspended and opened like an umbrella, under which was a small fire surrounded by log benches. 

Here I met the bewhiskered Sammy Norris, the other survival instructor, a veteran of the Boulder Outdoor School in Boulder, Utah, and an all-around bushcraft mage. Sammy was using a stone to bruise pine needles for tea, explaining they contain vitamin C and antioxidants. Bruising smashes the needles, allowing a more efficient extraction of nutrients. He tossed the needles into freshly boiled river water to let them steep for later. 

The majority of the class is practical, with ample opportunity to get hands-on. But as Scott pointed out, it is equally important to learn preparation and prevention. With the small fire crackling and a gentle breeze buffeting our canopy, we began with a hypothetical situation. 

Let’s say you’re tired of the grind, perhaps your job is stressing you out. You enjoy being outside when you have time, which isn’t often, but this weekend you’re setting it all aside and going for a hike in the Smokies. Get the heart pumping, fresh air flowing, and forget the stress for a while. You grab your day pack, exchange the laptop for energy bars and a bottle of water, and head out. The Great Smoky Mountains National Park alone has 850 miles of backcountry trails, so finding your path to peace shouldn’t be a problem. 

You arrive and check the trailhead map. There are several trails rated easy, moderate, and strenuous, and you decide to go moderate. It’s a beautiful spring day, the mountain breeze bringing with it the cool smell of earth. Hepatica and Toothwort are blooming, and mountain laurel flank the trail. You pass a few people, saying hello. The incline of the trail is increasing, but you’re feeling great. Then you come to a fork where another trail branches from yours. You remember that it was labeled strenuous on the trailhead map, but from here it doesn’t look too bad. You’ve got your wind up and you feel energized.

An hour later, you’re exhausted. The trail has become painfully steep and narrow, and you’re having difficulty with the rock- and root-littered path. You’re sweating and thirsty but you’ve already drained your water. You have yet to see anyone on this trail.

Now the sun has dropped low in the sky and taken the temperature with it. You think going back down the trail will be easier. You stumble along for a while, then it happens. You hit a steeper decline in the trail, and you pick up too much momentum. Your legs, over taxed from your ascent, fail and you fall headlong down the trail and over the side, tumbling down the steep slope. 

When your head clears, only a hint of light is filtering through the trees. It has become very cold. You’re cut, bruised, and your ankle is badly sprained. You can’t tell how far you’ve fallen or where you are because the surrounding forest looks all the same in the failing light. You have your cell phone but reception is unreliable. If you manage to get a call out, you still have to wait for rescue. What was supposed to have been a peaceful spring hike has suddenly become a survival situation.

In this scenario—and in a great majority of survival situations—Scott said your greatest danger is hypothermia, the number-one cause of outdoor fatalities, followed by accidents and dehydration. Hypothermia isn’t just dangerous in freezing conditions. It can occur at cool temperatures above 40 degrees if you’re wet, perhaps from rain or sweat or a fall while crossing a river. 

So, how do you avoid this and other potential survival situations? Scott’s answer is simple and direct, “The best way to deal with it is just to not let it happen.” In other words, be prepared. Always. Every time. As with our example, it doesn’t take extreme situations for things to go wrong, they can happen where and when you least expect them, and the one sure thing that will increase your chances of survival is being prepared. Some things you simply can’t foresee, but with planning, preparation and the right skills, you can save your or someone else’s life.

Doing what’s right is what this class is all about.

We moved on to the priorities of survival. What tops that list? Water? No. Food? Negative. Fire? Again, no. The most important survival priority is attitude. If you’re going to survive, you must have a positive mental attitude. If you give in to despair, let fear control you, you probably aren’t going to make it. In order to survive you must want to survive.

“Most people that survive these situations, they say that even if they felt like giving up, they didn’t want to give up because they’re thinking about their dad, their mom, their siblings, their kids, or whatever,” Scott said. Hypothermia may be the number-one direct cause of outdoor fatalities, but the number-one indirect cause is panic.

The hands-on portion of class covers fire making, shelter building, basic navigation and knots, among others, but the one that I most enjoyed was fire making. A few methods are covered, but I found the bow- and hand-drill methods the most interesting. Both of these use friction to create an ember by rapidly rotating a wooden spindle mounted into a notch that’s cut into a wooden fire board. Sammy taught this class, and his mastery, especially of the hand-drill method, was amazing.

Using the bow drill gives you a mechanical advantage, but the downside is that you have to make the bow. Finding or cutting a suitable stick or sapling for the bow is easy enough, but if you have no cordage, like paracord, with you, you’re going to have to find something to use as a bow string. Your shoelaces, for example, would work well. For me, the hand drill makes the most sense because it requires fewer components—basically all you need are the spindle and fire board—but it is probably the most difficult of the two to learn. You’ll need a lot practice for either of these methods, but master the art, and the science will take care of itself. You’ll be able to create a fire that might save your life. At the very least you’ll be warm and able to brew some pine needle tea, which, by the way, was quite tasty but probably isn’t going to replace your Earl Grey or Oolong. 

The class I took is a basic one-day survival class, but NOLI offers much more than survival training. Their classes include kayaking and canoeing, swift-water rescue, conservation, backpacking, and many others. They train fire, rescue, and state park professionals, as well as absolute beginners.

“We are as excited—or maybe more excited—about the brand new person that maybe never felt like they had a way to do it, they felt intimidated, they didn’t know where to start, and we very much are committed to filling that need.”

The school, along with other outdoor-related businesses of the area, was recently profiled on the Amazon Prime series, Air, Water, Or Land (AWOL). Scott, of course, was grateful for the exposure, but he already knew why Amazon chose the area. “I’ve traveled the world and from an outdoor standpoint, Northeast Tennessee is as good as it gets.”

NOLI is located in Erwin with its business partner, Raft USA. You can visit them on Facebook or at nolilearn.org.