It’s like Wilderness Survival 101

The instructor thinks people should learn how to survive on their own.

SEVEN HILLS, Ohio (AP) — Tom Laskowski and friends were busily pulling weeds along the road on a recent Saturday: cattails, wild onions and garlic, violets, garlic mustard, hostas and Jerusalem artichokes.

It wasn’t a beautification project. They were finding lunch.

Laskowski, 51, runs the Midwest Native Skills Institute from his house and offers training sessions around the state on surviving in the wilderness.

He teaches people how to live off the land, make candles and soap from scratch and create fire without matches or man-made devices.

He has spent 18 years researching and practicing aspects of survival skills, self-reliant living and new ways to use what he calls “old-ways skills.”

To test his ability, he goes four times a year on survival journeys into places like the New York Adirondacks and Kentucky’s Red River Gorge, with only a knife and a blanket. He carries more weather gear during forays into northern Maine in the dead of winter.

Back at Laskowski’s house, the roots of the roadside Jerusalem artichokes were washed, sliced and baked with bacon. The violets were whipped into a sugary sorbet. The other plants were cooked into soup and pesto sauce. Seeds from the ubiquitous sumac plant were turned into “lemonade.”

The only thing missing was his dandelion pizza.

There were five students in this edible-plant class — from as far away as Chicago and Pittsburgh — who wanted to learn what to eat and what to avoid. Not everything that grows in the forest is your friend. Some plants are poisonous.

The trick is knowing which is which. That’s where Laskowski and associate Bob Tubbesing, 88, of Wadsworth, come in. Tubbesing estimates that half of what he eats comes from woods and fields.

Laskowski does not want people to think he is a wild-eyed zealot preparing for the end of civilization.

“These are skills that took me years to learn. Skills few people know,” he said.

“I think people should know how to survive on their own, how to find food where most can’t. If nothing else, it can stretch your food budget and provide a healthy diet.”

He has taught a variety of survival courses for 10 years. They include a fire-making course, in which he shows how to build a fire using a piece of ice and twigs. Classes fill quickly.

Beyond teaching what is edible, Laskowski instructs on plants that relieve ailments such as headaches and stomach problems, soothe bee stings or staunch bleeding. Many plants are loaded with vitamins and minerals.