Urban Survival Skills?

I was perusing some other blogs and noticing how many of the activities were outdoorsy.  I am not just talking about playing in the back yard (which I am not envious of since keeping yards is a lot of work), but learning outdoor skills like gardening or even hunting, gathering, or camping.  These areas are obviously important but given our city lifestyle, including the fact that our being carless is an added obstacle in this area, I feel inadequate when it comes to nature survival skills.  Will my kids be clueless and unable to handle situations that could arise?

We are not completely indoors of course, but our outdoor scenarios are very urban.  Without even a back yard, we spend our outdoor time in parks, playgrounds, sidewalks, walking, or waiting at a bus stop.  Clearly, I am going to need to look into easy-to-get-to and affordable ways to get some nature skills.

But are T & C learning a different kind of survival?   I am starting to think that they are.  Last week we went to two homeschool group activities, one on Tuesday and one on Thursday, both requiring two-legged bus trips.  On our first bus Thursday, T & C chatted away asking why we had to go downtown to get another bus.  I went on to explain that buses come together downtown and at the south campus of UB (where we changed buses on Tuesday) so that people could come from their neighborhood and connect to a bus that would take them to their destination.  They always ask me what bus we will be taking memorizing the ones we take most frequently.  On some occasions, they've wanted to follow the route maps as the bus rides along.

All of this discussion prompted some of the other passengers to remark about how impressed they were about T's & C's level of curiosity and enthusiasm in our transportation and activities.  I thanked them and told them that I homeschool (in my own little attempt to spread the word about how great it is).  Later on, at the homeschool group, where everyone drives to get there except us, someone remarked that they had no idea how to use the NFTA buses.  I was reminded that most people in our area drive everywhere and wouldn't know how to grab a bus without a fair amount of research.  T & C know more about using public transportation in our area than many adults!

While it probably still isn't good that T & C don't know how to properly go to the bathroom in the woods, at least they are learning the general principals of using public transportation systems as well as the related safety and environmental benefits.  Where they don't know how to survive in nature, their conservation is helping nature survive.