New teaching site for the Upstate’s only wilderness skills school

Entering its fourth year, primitive survival training instills confidence in living in the wild

PICKENS COUNTY, SC – EarthSkills, LLC, a wilderness self-reliance school, recently opened its new teaching site on 500 acres in West Anderson, S.C. Their newly expanded program of study begins in February with Foraging For Food & Medicine, a single-day class. EarthSkills, LLC. was launched in the summer of 2013 by Alex Garcia, its principal instructor at historic Hagood Mill and Folklife Center in Pickens County. 

“This addition of private land adds new opportunities for the communities EarthSkills serves. Now we offer extended, overnight courses and can also include adolescents into our circle of students,” Garcia said. The hands-on survival classes are offered in both single and multiple day courses including evenings where the students camp out on site.

Garcia, a U.S. Army veteran and primitive skills instructor, conducts the monthly courses that encompasses the newcomer through advanced skills. Their inventory of courses now includes: The 4 Vital Skills; Create Fire!; The Survival Bow for Game & Protection and Trapping Fish and Small Game.

EarthSkills, LLC is a wilderness self-reliance school teaching primitive survival skills on two locations in the upstate. Classes are open to all including teenage students when accompanied by a paying guardian. Founded in July 2013 by Alex Garcia, its purpose is to help reacquaint our community with the bounty of nature and to reclaim the skills our culture once depended on to prosper as human beings.

For more information about this topic, or to schedule an interview with Alex Garcia, please call 864-979-5653 or e-mail [email protected].