Welcome back Canna Campers! In this week’s Base Camp blog we will be discussing emergency water purification and a newer, interesting way to do it!
As we discussed in our previous blog post Wilderness Woes, sometimes an adventure can take a quick turn where you find yourself lost, injured or without a vital resource: Clean water. So what can you do if you find yourself without clean water?
The easiest way to get clean drinking water is through a modern filter device such as the Life Straw or Sawyer Squeeze.
Picture Credit : Lifestraw.com Picture Credit Sawyer.com
But what if you don’t have access to one of these? No worries your friends at Canna Camp gotcha covered!
You’ve probably heard of a few common methods such as boiling water, but did you know you can use a Pine tree branch to filter water? Crazy as it sounds it works! Researchers at MIT have discovered this technique can produce up to 4 liters of water a day, which in a survival situation could be a lifesaver!
Furthermore, YouTuber Clay Walker went on to test this theory in a swamp known to have E.coli, and after laboratory testing the samples came back with no detectible E.coli! Amazing!(See the video below)
So what’s the catch? Nothing! Well maybe a few things, time for one, this method isn’t the fastest method to get clean drinking water, and you also have to find a healthy branch to cut off, so we do not recommend harming a tree unless absolutely necessary! 
Picture Credit :News.mit.edu
- Start by finding a healthy pine tree branch that is not dead or dying
- Shave or peel as much of the bark off the section of the branch as possible
- Insert each end snugly into a bottle cutting off the bottom of one of the bottles so you can add dirty water without removing the pine piece
That’s pretty much it, now you can leave this to produce water while you work on other pressing matters such as signaling for rescue or maybe just kicking back to relax if rescue isn’t needed, just a little extra drinking water.
While it’s true that Mother Nature may be trying to kill you, she also has given us many ways to thrive in nature and this is just one of many easy ways to get clean drinking water without a modern device.
That’s all for this Base Camp blog, If you found this interesting give us a follow on Twitter @cannacampsupply or shoot us an email cannacampsupply@gmail.com , we’d love to hear from you! As the camping season goes on we will teach you a few more ways you can filter water as well as some other handy tricks you can use on your next camping trip so stay tuned!
