CSUN Nature Students Survive the Big Chill of the Wilderness : Pulling an All-Nighter

One by one, the students disengage from modern life--automobile, warmth, real food--and plan their procession into the past. They have come for college credits, but this isn’t about making the grade. It’s about making shelter and food, tools and traps, something out of nothing. Their most prized possession is their creativity. They hope that it keeps them alive.

The class, Basic Wilderness Survival, is given each semester at Cal State Northridge. Two weekends ago, about 30 students and a dozen teaching assistants joined instructor Ron Hood for 48 hours in the middle of nowhere, Domeland Wilderness, just east of Sequoia National Forest, about 75 miles northwest of Mojave.

Here is their story:

Shortly after 11 a.m. Nov. 16, the students gather for the two-mile hike to their campsites. They are ready, but Hood, 46, a Green Beret in Vietnam, master psychologist of the woods, stalls.

“You see some of them are getting real nervous, anxious to get going,” Hood says. “Listen to their sound level. They’re talking fast. In a real survival situation, the tension level would be high, and we want them to get as close to that as possible.”

Hood also wants to put pressure on the students by giving them only a few hours of sunlight to make their shelter; haste is a must in the wilderness.

And then there’s the final pep talk, which sounds more scary than soothing. “There is a possibility Saturday night of snow,” he warns, adding evacuation may be necessary.

He tells them to avoid camping in caves with Indian markings. “It’s possible you’ll find human body parts here. If you find a skull, leave it. Everyone wants one for an ashtray.” The class doesn’t argue the point. Hood says that several years ago, one student found a dead Indian sitting in one of the caves. Nobody’s ever gone back to check it out.

Hood finishes, and the march begins. The most conscientious search the grounds for trash that they might use later for tools or weapons. Others search their souls.

“I’ve always liked the idea of living in the wilderness someday,” says Adam Kelly, 23, a junior majoring in English. “I guess this weekend I’ll find out how much.”

Mike Weiss, 20, a former engineering major, was lost in the city. “Living in the city scares me, but I could live out here for years,” he says. “I can think straight out here.”

Susan Fehte, 25, a business student, was about to flunk out of CSUN two years ago until she hooked up with Hood. Her mom flew from New Jersey, about to bring her home. “It was do or die for me,” she says, “and I decided to take a fun class to get my GPA up. I took it, and it changed everything. I’m in an accounting firm, and I like my job, but I have to combine business and nature. Maybe I’ll work in administration at a park.”

Hood claims that his class has rescued many unmotivated students who, by mastering the environment, learn studying for English or economics isn’t as overwhelming as they first imagined. “When you confront the impossible, the difficult becomes easier,” he says.

Hood has taught survival for 17 years, and this will be his last semester as a part-time instructor at CSUN. Because of budget cutbacks, the class will be taught next year by a full-time teacher. Hood draws on skills he learned in Vietnam. When he returned to America, he blew his savings, about $70,000, on a three-month binge in Vegas. He didn’t find peace until a visit to the Vietnam Memorial in Washington in 1987. “Everything bottled up inside me came out,” he says, “and since then, I’ve been free.”

The students have their own immediate struggles. They cross the south fork of the Kern River and immediately look for shelter in the caves and hills that, for two days, will be home. The sun, a much-needed ally in the wilderness, will set in a few hours, and there is plenty to do. They must build a fire bed, which entails putting out a fire and placing dirt and pine needles over it to make a bed.

They must also fill their canteens with water, and find anything resembling food. If all else fails, they can always pry open their emergency food packs, which Hood recommends if they become very sick. But as Stephen Kazakos, 22, says, “this would be the one class where you would be honestly cheating yourself if you did that. You would never know if you could make it.”

The class has a rule against stealing. Hood recalls the time several years ago when the teaching assistants suspected that someone was stealing from the campsites. They planted a bottle of wine and filled it with urine. The next morning, they noticed that the bottle was almost empty. “We got him back,” Hood says.

But if someone misplaces something, it’s up for grabs, and the barter system applies. One student lost his Swiss army knife and had to collect extra firewood to retrieve it.

The students separate into groups. Kazakos and three friends head far up the mountain, find their cave, appropriately shielded from the elements, and divvy up chores. Kazakos and Nick Avakian, 19, will make the fire beds, while Eddie Khodabakhshian, 18, collects the wood and Kristie Schmidt, 19, the pine needles. “When you know people,” Kazakos says, “you’re not afraid to speak out.” As Hood explains, the weekend is also about getting along with others.

Some prefer, though, to go solo. Like Tal Ovadia, 23, a student from Israel who will enlist next year for a three-year stint in the Israeli army. “I want to see if I can make it by myself,” he says. “In a group, you don’t learn everything because you’re not doing it all yourself.”

Storme Warren has to go solo. Warren, 20, trying to become a full-fledged teaching assistant in the class, must first pass the initiation. Equipped with only a jacket, blanket and a few tools, he must spend a full 24 hours by himself in a remote corner of the camp area and accomplish a series of tasks. He is not allowed to communicate with anyone; one word, and he fails.

Plus, he must contend with Hood’s elaborate mind games. For each initiation, to create as much tension as possible--the normal survival atmosphere--Hood zeroes in on the camper’s weakness. Warren’s is his insatiable curiosity. So he won’t let Warren ask any questions.

Hood and the other teaching assistants escort Warren to his day of exile. Walking in single file, not uttering a sound and looking grim, the group marches Warren to his temporary home. Upon arriving, Hood tells Warren that he must build several traps and demonstrate how he can tell time by the sun and stars.

Hood relents for just a minute. “We’ll welcome you back with open arms at any time,” he tells Warren before leaving. “It won’t do any of us any good if you die out here tonight.”(According to Hood, nobody has ever quit in the middle of a test, but many have failed. That includes Mike Albrecht, 23, who last year was so distraught at failing, he wouldn’t attend the traditional Saturday night campfire. “I just hid under the cave, I was so embarrassed,” Albrecht says. He passed last semester.)

They head back to camp to confront other crises. Eileen Marmorek, 26, accidentally sits on a cactus, and one of the teaching assistants has to pull the pieces out. “You don’t care who’s looking at your butt when you have that stuff sticking in you,” she says.

Marmorek is making camp with her fiance, Jay Resnick, 21. The weekend is more than just a struggle with nature. “If we can go through this, we’ll have no trouble with marriage,” Marmorek says.

For tonight’s dinner, they plan to eat lizard stew. Among other popular foods are ephedra and yarrow, plants boiled to make tea. But, as Marmorek says, “you get so busy doing other stuff that you’re really not that hungry.”

Everyone goes to sleep. It is approaching midnight, and the temperature dips into the mid-20s.

Not everyone sleeps well. It is Saturday morning, and Schmidt is agonizing over her failure to make a good fire bed. She failed to shield the fire far enough from the wind. She is determined to change that. “Tonight, I’ll sleep like a queen,” she promises.

Meanwhile, students have started on their tasks. Avakian is building a spear. Chriz Dally, 20, is making an arrowhead. She is deaf and communicates this weekend through an interpreter. Hood has taught many deaf students and says the wilderness, with its hidden sounds, can be much more dangerous for them. Not for Dally. “I feel safer here than I do in the city,” she says, “where there are traffic signs and electrical noises.”

Part of the day is spent in leisure activities, as survival camp evolves into summer camp. “I just want to skip stones all day,” Schmidt says, “but I know I have work to do.”

Shortly after 4 p.m., Hood and the teaching assistants take off to fetch Warren. He looks fine and is ready to prove that he belongs. He shows the traps and the shelter he made. He is then escorted to the creek where, dunked into freezing water with just his underwear on, he learns the good news. He passed the test.

The celebration begins. Bologna sandwiches and peach Schnapps for the victorious survivalist.

“That was the longest afternoon of my entire life,” an exhausted Warren says. “I learned I had more self-confidence than I thought I had. I felt good through the whole thing. Failure was never an option.”

Warren joins the rest of the group for the Saturday night campfire, where jokes and scary stories are exchanged like a tribal ritual. Hood tells of past trips when groups encountered unexplained phenomena. Once, in a cave at another site, a camper was spooked when his equipment kept going on fire and there was no trace of how it started. Hood attributes these stories to the workings of the wilderness spirits.

Most students seem unaffected by such talk except, perhaps, for Schmidt. “This kind of stuff freaks me out.”

Even though it’s colder tonight--the low was 24 degrees--people sleep better. They had learned from their earlier mistakes.

“It was so warm here,” Schmidt says Sunday morning. “I didn’t wake up once.”

But as the sun rises, so do the moods of even the most ardent nature lovers. They want to go home.

“Let’s raid Mojave,” says Maria Mendoza, 24. Mojave, a small city about 25 miles from Lancaster, is a booming metropolis compared to Domeland Wilderness.

They pack their gear, clearing away signs of their stay, trying to measure how this experience fits into their lives.

“I realized that I can do it, and I’d like to have a career in the outdoors,” Kelly says.

Ovadia finds out that he could survive on his own.

Kazakos realizes the value of cooperation. “We all worked together, and you need that to survive.”

And Marmorek learns a valuable lesson. “We found out that we’re right for each other,” she says. “Everyone said we’d get into a fight, but we didn’t. We’ve seen each other at our worst, and we know we still love each other.”

But the trip back to reality isn’t completely joyous. The survivors know that they will leave something behind.

“When you drive and see the 405 and 5,” Fehte says, “you’re dirty and tired but you still want to turn around. You see that smog and a depression sets in. It’s a real downer.”

At 9 a.m., Hood fires three gunshots into the air. It is time to hit the two-mile trail on the first step back to the San Fernando Valley and civilization.

Things won’t seem the same anymore.