"Survival" Week

On Monday, mere minutes after we've hiked in to our chosen shelter location, I find myself experiencing a rush of anxiety. I've been navigating increasing irritation for an hour. I recognize the upsurge, now, that feeling where I want to snap at someone. I have control. I express to the group that I'm feeling the pressure to choose a location and get our shelter construction under way; that my judgement as far as site selection goes is compromised. Someone tries to help me--he points out that, without rain in the immediate forecast, with the temperature as it is, finishing the shelter is not a matter of life or death. Alas, my fear is not rational, but I'm aware of it. When we finally settle down to a vote on one of our three possible spots, I make sure I vote last, insist another student go ahead and express his opinion when he asks me what I want.

My stretch for control over my emotions and behavior taxes me. My stress mounts, but it's all psychological. We've been here for an hour. It's a beautiful, warm, sunny spring day. The van is within spitting distance, though technically out of sight. I am uninjured, satiated, rested, well-hydrated.

But the week looms over me. Five days out here with nothing but what we've brought with us--the items we've hand-made or gathered this year, with few exceptions. I didn't even bring back up gear--no sleeping bag, no extra clothes. Everything I brought into the van is out with me in the forest above the Flying M Ranch now--except my wallet, cellphone, and keys. I have a sheep hide for a sleeping pad, a bag of clothes, my bow drill kit, a throwing stick, a knife, some salve, some cordage, a sage smudge, a burn bowl, a deer hide that still needs to be stretched, and the basket I carried everything out here in. And nine months worth of experiences playing in the woods, of course.

Once we've chosen a location (finally!), the men go about collecting center ridge poles for our debris hut. We plan to make this one a little bigger than our first attempt in November, which was a bit cramped for four people and a fire, especially when one of them clocked in at over six feet. I make a rake out of my throwing stick and some paracord and then start pushing Big Leaf Maple leaves down the hill.

Somewhere in the middle of those moments, as the sticks and leaves grow into piles, I have to sit down, draw up my knees, and hug myself. The anxiety rushes over me in a wave and a pit in my stomach drops. I curl up in a little ball on the forest floor, hair akimbo, surrounded by debris and a quiet, purposeful hum of activity from the men.

I am anxious, but not losing my shit. I can ID the emotion and the ways it has been expressing itself--the story I've been telling about our collective lack of urgency over building the shelter. I've been irritated at Grey for coming over and snacking constantly on our prepared turkey jerky--I'm worried about the food situation and I think he's eating too much. I almost tell Cameron to "Go f--- [himself]" for no reason at all and manage to swing my sentence around and convert it to a direction to myself: "Go...rake leaves, See!" Stopping myself that way is like pulling a U-turn on the freeway, but I manage.

The anxiety comes from the time. Four nights in this place, with minimal gear. Pushing my edges, being hungry, cold, uncomfortable. Feeling in danger, though it's simulated, more or less. I could still fall and break a leg, of course, but there are safety nets here. We would not try to do a field dressing on a broken femur and then let me tough it out until Friday. Even "silly" things--giving up my phone. Losing touch with the bevy of people I'm communicating with hurts. I miss the hive of new friends and acquaintances that have expanded my world in the last couple months.

So I sit. I breathe. I let myself experience this feeling. Let go of the stories. Ground myself in this place. This clearing, sunlight dappling through the fir trees and spattered on the sword ferns, this is my home. I have always been here. I will always be here. Someone shows me how to press on a couple of points on my upper bicep--anti-anxiety points, he calls them. I push on them. Keep breathing. It helps.

I go back to work on the leaves. By Tuesday morning, after sleeping well enough in our not-totally-completed but still sufficient shelter, the anxiety has faded into a feeling of waiting, patience. I wasn't comfortable, I was kind of cold, but I didn't die in an uncompleted shelter.

I realize that there isn't enough money in my bank account to pay my mortgage bill, and that feeds a whole new spurt of anxiety. I navigate whether I'm going to let that bounce and deal with it when I get back to civilization, or whether I should tell Grey. We would have to drive far enough away that I could get cell phone service to do some online banking. I decide not to tell him, set the concern aside. It pops up again, a couple of times, and I finally share that little piece of info with a couple of classmates. They normalize it; apparently being a few days late on my mortgage payment isn't going to cost me my house. I knew this, of course, but hearing from others helps. I settle back down and forget about the issue. It turns out, when I finally get a chance to check on Friday, that my concerns were groundless and the payment has cleared just fine. I'm glad I didn't leave.

On Thursday, after four days of increasing hunger (snails do not make a particularly filling meal, but I wasn't squeamish about eating them after the first one), the four of us climb up a hill.

Downed, browned, and dead Douglas Fir and Cedar litter the hillside. We clamber over the debris; a packed web of branches and stumps, interspersed with a few hopeful sword ferns. I step over the translucent, cracked shell of a snail drying in the direct sun. Without the tree canopy, other life suffers. The devastation of the logging sears into me as the sun bakes everything.

The hike is slow going, for me, though the men are faster. I'm tired. Hunger, real hunger, hits me half way up the hill. Thursday, three of us decided on a partial fast. We eat only from the land, refraining from munching on any of the prepared food we brought. Already I was calorie deficient; now, doubly so. Still, there's plenty of stored fat in my body and my sleep and hydration have been decent. I know my body can go further and that much of my physical discomfort is grounded in the psychological challenge of the reduction in stimulation over the last four days. Less food. No internet. No phone. Serious reduction in conversational partners (not that my classmates aren't charming). Less to do in general. I take a lot of naps during the days. I spend a couple hours rubbing a piece of turkey leg bone on a sandstone rock on Wednesday night, trying to make an awl. I don't get very far. Need a rougher rock to rub on. Life slows down and shrinks to the shelter site and the mile or so around it that I'm willing to walk to.

But Thursday I venture out a little farther, expend some of my precious calories on this clamber up the hill. At the top the four of us brace ourselves against the breeze, look out over the valley. The clear-cut, gross as it is, comes with one hell of a view of the ranch and surrounding areas. We can look out at another hillside that we all walked up in January when we were here for our trapping week.

I tell the story of the only t-shirt I brought, though I'm not wearing it at the moment of the telling. I bought this shirt nine years ago at the NOLS store in Lander, Wyoming, after a 30 day backpacking trip through the Beartooths. That month represented the most immersed in the natural world I'd ever been, at that point in my life. It also represented the last time in my life that I got to spend any significant time pushing my edges outside via experiential learning until this year.

I was afraid. I was afraid of a life outside the constructed artificial box that makes up modern capitalism. I couldn't see a life beyond what I'd been taught and told to pursue--a "good" education, a "good" career, a "good" relationship. I went to college. Joined the military. Met a man and married him. Plotted out the five-ten-fifteen year cycle of my life. Thought I was happy. Thought I was well-off. An adult.

My life wasn't unadulterated misery, to be sure. There were many happy moments. But in general, I was not being truthful to my own core needs, wants, and desires. I was subverting who I was to fit into a mold that had become increasingly constricting. I was surviving--barely--but I wasn't thriving.

This year has been about breaking out of survival mode, in many ways.

I chose that t-shirt to bring with me very intentionally, though I end up not wearing it much. It's either too cold, and I've got wool long-underwear on, or it's too hot, and I'm in nothing but a leather and rabbit-fur vest. This t-shirt represents the last time in my life I was on my own path. Nineteen-year-old me knew more than I gave her credit for.

On our way out of the Ranch for breakfast Friday morning, Grey stops the van in the middle of the road by the same pond we jumped into in January. Three of us quickly strip to our skivvies. I pull on that t-shirt from NOLS; tan, a stylized license plate design on the front that spells out "LNDR." I jam my bare feet into my boots--one thing that hasn't happened this year is my ability to go barefoot on rocks. Baby steps.

The three of us jog through the uncut grass to the concrete platform next to the pond. The morning is cool, crisp, though nothing like the weather we had in January. It's fairly shallow; we decide jumping in might be less than safe. Months ago, I was scared of this icy plunge. I'm still scared today, but I take hold of the ladder and climb down without hesitation before either of the men can usurp my pride of first place. It's not as cold as I thought it would be, but once I've hit the bottom of the pond and dunk my head I've had enough. The men follow in rapid succession--one is brave enough to launch himself off the platform in a whoop of cannonball enthusiasm.

Dripping, cold, nearly naked, and barefoot, we stand on the dock, face the East, and feel the rising sun on our faces. We perform the same Japanese purification ritual that we enacted in January. The spirit that runs through all things flows through us as we kiai into the sun-drenched landscape.

I'm not surviving. Not anymore. I'm thriving.