Canoe Trails Training Manual

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2. Safety Through Skill (cont.) train yourself to be careful and to be prepared. That means you will need to develop skill and good judgment in all the following fields: a. Of course, you must learn how to handle a canoe, with someone else or alone, under all sorts of conditions, earning the canoeing merit badge as you do this. b. You must be good enough at swimming to have qualified or be able to qualify for the swimming merit badge. c. You must have an actual working knowledge of first aid equivalent to that required for they first aid merit badge. d. You must have developed safe habits in using the knife and axe. e. You must know not only how to build but particularly how to control a fire, never starting one where it can travel into underbrush or underground in dry duff, and always putting out anything which is burning before j you leave camp or drop it in the woods. All fires must be built on a rock base. 3 . Knowing Where You Are No one should ever have any justifiable excuse for getting lost. In the first place, you should stay within hailing distance of the other members of your group. You should always know how you reached where you are at any moment. If you should wander off a trail, you should stay in one spot, shouting at intervals, until your group locates you. As a final sure shot expedient, you should make a dense black smoke with a hot fire on which you have fed moist leaves, moss or green
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