A surprising class on resourcefulness – led by a former homesteader – surfaces in Del Rey Oaks.

Her life once included zero electricity, grizzlies for alarm clocks and baby fawns as extra pets. Now it’s more making meals for those who need it, taking nutrition classes and painting pastels. Instead of foraging wild blackberries on the river with a raft, Monterey’s Ellen Townsend is hunting coupons on the kitchen table with a pair of scissors.

But the way she sees it, she’s pretty much the same.

“Once you’re a survivalist in one place,” she says, “you’re a survivalist everywhere.”

That’s a main theme at her atypical Moose Lodge event (where she’s also a member), the “Hard Times Survival School” ($10), Thursday, June 27.

Today, working as a traveling health care/healing home chef, Townsend – who declines to state her age but does add she’s “a mature woman” – is a long way away from her old trailer on a remote, forested property in Northern California’s Siskiyou County, which in turn was a long way from any power grid. Twelve miles, to be precise.

There – even as she saw signs something had eaten some of her goats – Townsend didn’t mind neighbors like the half-ton grizzly who rattled her family one morning.

“We and the children awoke to the trailer shaking,” Townsend says. “It wasn’t an earthquake, it was a bear! It was scratching itself on the tongue of the trailer… but nothing like that freaked us out, we enjoyed it.”

Animals like bears shouldn’t be feared, Townsend adds, but “respected.” While she kept an eye on her then-young children, the predator didn’t prevent them from foraging for wild berries, planting trees and climbing neighboring mountains.

In addition to feeding hummingbirds from the palms of her hand, she raised orphaned fawns rescued by The Department of Fish and Game.

“[Fish and Game] told us the fawns probably wouldn’t live,” she says. “Not only did the little fawns live, they thrived and they became very, very attached to the children.”

Townsend says the fawns were so calm that they would use her children’s earlobes as pacifiers. The deer even returned once released into the wild to introduce their own newborns.

Only it’s not these far-out wilderness experiences Townsend focuses on in her talk.

“What inspired me [to teach the course] is what’s happening to the economy,” she says. “I know people are intrigued with the backwoods survival, and there are stories to tell, but I think the value, the real value, is going to be in urban survival.”

To Townsend, that strategy is a matter of ensuring stable employment and supplies, so networking advice, bargain-shopping tips and economical cooking all play into the course prominently.

“I’ve got some tricks up my sleeve,” she says. “I want to show them how you can feed six people well, healthfully and sufficiently, on $5. I’m going to have the foods out there.”

She’ll turn to gear from there, including affordable and effective lights, grills and tents. She’s collected sale fliers from high-end retailers like REI and Outdoor World to point students in the right direction.

Joe Lacuesta, a manager at Outdoor World in Seaside, figures it can only help.

“Being in California an earthquake is something that can happen, or even some type of power outage,” he says. “Having something there, being able to cook and get clean water, can be really helpful.”

Lifetime logger Vern Cornwell has known Townsend for nearly 40 years, and knows she is well-qualified to illuminate her audience.

“You need to be prepared,” he says. “The more you have in your head the less you have to carry.”

The way he sees it, this expertise is going to come in handy soon enough.

“I think we’re in for some pretty nasty financial weather in the next few years,” he says. “We need to be able to take care of ourselves, because nobody else is gonna do it. The course will be a foundation, a beginning, something to start with. You’ve gotta start somewhere.”

Whether that’s a trailer in the middle of the forest, or a $10 class at the Moose Lodge.

HARD TIMES SURVIVAL SCHOOL happens at Monterey Moose Family Center, 555 Canyon Del Rey Blvd., Del Rey Oaks, 7-9pm Thursday, June 27. $10. 394-6896, www.montereymoose876.org