» In Crystal Shadows, scientist Gina Petrillo finds herself on a wilderness survival trek. While researching Gina’s survival scenes, I discovered Tom Brown Jr.’s Tracking and Wilderness Survival School, the largest tracking, nature and wilderness survival school in the world, conveniently located just a couple of hours’ drive from my front door. In a fit of the obsessiveness for which writers are famous, I decided that to effectively write about wilderness survival — even in a fantasy world — I needed to experience wilderness survival. So I signed up for the week-long Standard Course.

Since the course was an introductory one, students were allowed to bring tents, but otherwise the class was conducted completely out-of-doors or in the shelter of a large open barn in which a family of bats darted about during evening lectures. The bathroom facilities were of the porta-potty variety and my bathing was done in outdoor wooden stalls — after I’d hauled a five-gallon bucket of hot water from an outdoor, wood-fired water heater. Despite these hardships, the week was one of the stellar experiences of my lifetime. I learned to recognize animal tracks, build brush shelters and traps, find safe drinking water and edible wild plants, and — the crowning achievement of the week — start a fire using a fireboard and spindle I’d carved myself from a hunk of cedar. I cannot describe how proud I felt when the spark I had worked for leapt into flame and fifty-some classmates burst into applause all around me.

Now, if only there had been a hot wizard around somewhere...