The only place in the world where I feel stress just lift away as if a heavy blanket was suffocating my every thought and action, making me feel small and insignificant is the wilderness. This is where I truly sense a power of raw energy stored and finally being able to release it, and to be connected with life at its most primitive and basic level. “It’s more important to feel strong, than be strong in life”, a quote that always sums up my beliefs and values, and when it’s just you and nature, at least for me your surrounded by this feeling of bliss and peace. To be honest I was never much for the outdoors, rather staying inside sitting on a couch and spending endless hours on my computer a bag of chips in one hand, a bottle of Pepsi in the other, isn’t that a lovely picture? One afternoon after my sixteenth birthday I was switching through channels on my TV and I came across the outdoor network, and a show called “survivor man” was on. At first I wasn’t interested at all, but as the show progressed I became more intrigued and by the end of the show I fully wanted with all my heart to experience what les stroud the host of the show was involved in, camping, hiking, canoeing, hunting, and of course surviving. The only problem was my parents were not huge fans of nature and camping, even to this day there not too fond of activities which shaped the way I want to live my life, so with a little effort and searching I found a local air cadets branch where their main goal was camping and survival training. After almost a whole year of straining my 180 pound overweighted body, I reached my goal of 140 pounds through never-ending military styled drills and training, I was finally able to start being taught how to survive and live off the land in a forested area west of tamagami park. For the first whole week we were divided into two groups with only the necessities to survive, tents, food rations, matches, and pots, the group that passed the test would go through the next stage of survival training, the group that failed would have to launch their flare into the sky to admit defeat for many reasons, fear, hunger, etc. Luckily our group had passed and moved onto the second stage where it was only a pair of two, with the same camping supplies without food rations. Let me tell you it is not as easy as it looks the feeling of always being busy to feed your hungry body is not a walk in the park, but by the end of the second week I adapted to this way of life, plants became easier to find and animals (rabbits, ruffed grouse, fish, snails) seemed to just jump into the pan. The day I was reborn as a new person was when the final third week passed by, I had just been placed in a location to survive the week by myself no one to rely on and I began to have a sense of feeling at home. The day was gorgeous, no over cast to hide the sunshine, and I was out setting snares for rabbits that were abundant in the area, leaning over one of the branches to set the steel snare across a path carved from the feet’s of hundreds of hares that crossed the trail every day, a sound of snapping twigs were behind me. Turning around I saw a deer staring directly into my eyes and for a moment my body felt paralyzed I never seen a deer so close before, I could see every pattern on the deer’s gleaming velvet coat and just as it was there for a second it was gone, vanishing back into the forest of whispering pine and birch trees. At that moment I realized where I belonged, not in a complex world of lifeless people, but in the untamed wilderness.
BD
jour18 