AN INSTRUCTOR'S LEGACY

LARRY DEAN OLSEN IS WIDELY CONSIDERED THE 'FATHER' OF PRIMITIVE SKILLS TRAINING.

- Christopher Nyerges

Larry Dean Olsen is a giant in the world of primitive skills. In fact, nearly every teacher and practitioner today has a direct or indirect lineage to Olsen.

A QUICK START

In 1966, Brigham Young University (BYU) undergraduate Larry Dean Olsen was offered $90 to teach primitive survival skills to fellow students. Seventy-two people showed up for that on-campus class, during which Olsen taught how to build a fire without matches, build a shelter and other primitive skills that would keep you alive if you had to go into the outdoors without gear. The class was so successful that it was split into two sections (as a result, Olsen got paid twice what he expected). This course was called Youth Leadership 380.

Olsen also had an opportunity to staff a special course offered by Outward Bound, working with adjudicated youth. He applied his experience from that course by using primitive skills in his work with a new Outward Bound adaptive program back at BYU. He began conducting 30-day survival skills field trips, often for students who weren't doing well in typical school classes. This became his Youth Leadership 480 course (or Youth Acculturation Through Outdoor Recreation).

Those classes were popular and attracted attention.

His direct approach to survival, based on the idea that survival training is best achieved by learning to live off the land without previously manufactured gear, won wide approval by students and observers.

A subsequent arrangement with BYU allowed him to use his 480 Course model with adjudicated youth from the courts in Utah County who would spend time in the wilderness with Olsen and staff members. In 1969, he and his staff won a national award: Youth Rehabilitation Through Outdoor Survival.

ANCIENT SKILLS