Starting a fire might not be as easy as most folks think. Just ask some of the girls from the Melbourne, FL Girl Scout Troop 2037. They learned that there are several wrong ways to attempt to get a camp fire started and then there is the correct method. The correct method, as taught by survival and outdoors experts from Green Earth Survival School, is accomplished by following several well defined stages. First, the safest location must be chosen. Once the fire lay location is chosen and prepared, then dry tinder and wood has to be collected and carefully stacked and layered so that one well placed waterproof match will ignite the bundle. When you have the fire lay tinder bundle safely burning only then do you slowly feed the fire with larger sticks of dry wood.

Along with basic fire building the Scouts also learned to build emergency shelters, how to collect and purify water, basic navigation, finding direction using the sun and many other fun survival skills.

One of the most important skills they practiced was Lost Proofing. Although it's great to know what to do and how to cope with becoming lost in the woods it's even more important to learn how to not get lost. The Scouts learned that Awareness is the key to always knowing where you are and that it is very important to maintain a sense of place when you are exploring. They practiced and reinforced skills that would help them find and remember prominent landmarks and natural features that they could easily recognize on their return trip.

The girls also revisited and discussed the basic Hug-a-Tree principle. They all recognized that being alone in the wild can be a frightening experience, even for adults, and that hugging a tree, talking to it and making it your friend can have a calming effect and sometimes makes the adventure less scary.

Hank Fannin, the owner and Chief Instructor at Green Earth Survival School, www.greenearthsurvivalschool.com stated that as far as individual attention, interest shown and general knowledge of basic survival skills is concerned, the girls of Troop far exceeded his expectations and rivaled those of many of his adult groups. Hank also added, "If we're just talking about having fun in general - they were the best."