Priorities: dryness, warmth, then water. Don't worry about starving to death just yet; your first priority should be to stay dry, your second to keep warm. You can go several days without water (and even more without food), but being wet will lower your temperature and make you vulnerable to hypothermia. If you doubt that you will be found before nightfall, find a windbreak such as a rock, fallen log, or the base of a cliff (watch out for rockslides, though).

2torial #0434: Learn2 Behave When Lost in the Woods (Continued) Assess the situation Now that you're calm, collected and not in denial, sit down and think things through. How long have you been lost? Mentally trace your thoughts back to the last point where you definitely knew your location. How long ago was that? In what general direction have you been travelling since then? If you have a compass: Use it now to give your directional sense some bearings: we came from thataway and that's Northwest, but we started walking South, so the trail must have slowly looped... And so forth. Even if you don't have a compass, try to approximate this kind of location-sense while your memories are fresh. If you don't have a compass, see Step 3. Now you have some decisions to make. If you haven't been lost long and seem to be in relatively safe terrain (not surrounded by rockslides or thorn bushes, for instance), you may decide to retrace your steps. If so, skip to Step 3. If the circumstances suggest that further wandering may be hazardous (night is falling, cliff edges abound), then you may want to stay put and wait for rescue. If so, skip to Step 5 Step 3