You are NOT your Child’s Safety Net

How many of you have taken your child camping with promises of fresh air and fresh experiences? How many of you have told them, “don’t wander off,” or “watch out for poison ivy?” Ok, how about this; how many of you have taught your child how to signal a rescue plane, build a rudimentary shelter, build a fire without matches and use it to signal rescuers?

The truth is that many of us set off into the wilderness with our children in tow, content that we have a single responsibility to see them safely home to their mother’s when the trip is done. But, while we certainly do everything in our power to ensure we are able to care for our kids, the reality is that doing so isn’t always a choice we get to make. Unless your child has been glued to your body and you happen to be immortal, you can’t be the only survival tool your child has available.

Empowering your son or daughter by teaching them fundamental survival and self-rescue techniques is the most responsible thing you can do. Ensure they know what to do in an emergency should you, God forbid, be injured or killed or should the two of you become separated in the wild. In that case, all your good intentions are pointless.

You should teach and prepare your child for any outing as follows:

• Teach your child how to build a safe fire and how to use it to make signal smoke
• Equip your child with a signal whistle and have him carry it at all times while camping or hiking
• Teach your child basic direction finding skills
• Teach your child how to find and make drinking water safe
• Teach your child basic first aid skills
• Teach your child how to build a shelter
• Equip your child with a compass and teach her how to use it

There are any number of things I could add to this list that would be useful but, for now, the objective isn’t to turn your child into the next Bear Grylls. You just want to do what you can to ensure that your child can prolong their survival independent of you. Every additional hour they can survive on their own means that much more opportunity for rescuers to locate them. So do the right thing and equip your child with the safety net they really need; the knowledge and skill to survive.

Don’t Sweat It

The title of this post is less abstract than you might think. I’m not advocating remaining calm in the face of adversity. I mean, I am, but not in this post. This post is specific actually about one important element of outdoor survival in cold climate wilderness and something you really want to avoid; sweat. 

It’s normal to assume that perspiration in the cold means you’re doing something right. You’re staying warm and that’s a good thing, isn’t it? Well, yes, and if you’re outdoors on a safe camping trip, breaking a sweat isn’t necessarily a bad thing providing you have warm shelter to return to. But when you are trying to survive in the outdoors, the rules change a bit. 

Assuming you don’t have a shelter ready or cold weather camping gear to keep you cozy and a stack of wood already prepared for a fire, sweating is the last thing you want to do. Perspiring, in fact, can kill you. Perspiration is your body’s method of cooling itself down. Whatever activity you are engaged in that’s causing you to perspire will eventually cease. Say, for example, you’re trudging through knee deep snow in an outdoor survival situation. What happens when you stop to rest? 

Once your activity ceases, that means the calorie burning stops. Your heat production stops. But that moisture is still present and two things happen next – it cools and so does your body. That’s not good if you’re stranded in the outdoors without quality shelter. As that moisture cools or evaporates, you suddenly find yourself far more chilled than is safe. It could, simply, be the death of you. 

In any winter wilderness survival situation, be it a solo camping trip (in which survival is always one bad turn away) or a disaster in which you find yourself, DO remain active. DON’T let your activity level warm you to the point of sweating. Remain conscious of how warm you are becoming. Remove layers as you work so that you remain reasonably warm but not hot enough to sweat. If removing layers isn’t an option, take frequent rests or go through your activity slowly to keep sweating to a minimum. 

If you are unable to stop after breaking a sweat, as may be the case if you are desperately trying to get a shelter built and wood gathered for a fire before the sun sets, continue with your activity until everything you need is finished. Without that completed shelter and a fire, your sweat may become fatal and stopping to rest (except to catch your breath) is not the right idea.

The Crowded Outdoors

I love to spin a good yarn and my adventures in the outdoors serve up excellent fodder for the story-telling cannon. From the epics I’ve endured to the simple Zen-like beauty of the wilderness, life outdoors is something I’ve enjoyed sharing with my more urban friends and colleagues. It stands to reason, therefore, that I also enjoy actually living these experiences with friends and family and am always pleased when one of them tags along. I’m particularly moved when somebody experiences the wild for the first time; overcoming their iPod and Starbucks Venti Mocha addiction long enough to actually live in the world for a short time rather than existing isolated from it by the modern conveniences they are so accustomed to. 

Anxious to chase away the lame-weather blues, one of my regular hiking and camping pals and I decided to pay our local climbing gym a visit this weekend. Though neither of us has any noteworthy talent for the sport, we’re proficient and passionate climbers and some time getting vertical in a gym is at least better than sitting on our butts wishing the weather were better. When we entered the gym, already excited about the exercise ahead, we were stopped in our tracks. Packed wall to wall and crashing against several thousand square feet of artificial climbing was a sea of helmeted bodies clamoring for their chance at some up-time. The place was filled with the sound of cheering, laughing, yelling and crying children. There wasn’t a route unattended. It was like a storm of people lashing a diminutive cliff face. We glanced at each other and, without a word, my climbing partner and I turned and left, deciding the only climbing we’d get in that day would be into a couple tall beers at our local bar. 

And at this point you’re asking, what do these two seemingly unrelated paragraphs have in common? Doesn’t this guy know anything about smooth story flow? About clean transitions? About telling a tale? I do, but I didn’t say I was good at it. Still, these seemingly unrelated paragraphs serve to tell the story that I am torn. I am torn between my passion for sharing the outdoors with anybody who is willing to endure the experience and the vision I had at that gym. This vision, or series of visions, was of a warmer time of the year when all those bodies would be pressed, not against plastic and plaster at a gym, but against the very real crags and cliffs I’d be climbing. I had a vision of latte-toting parents blissfully ignoring their over-indulged children as they screamed with glee and tossed rocks over the sides of cliffs my friends and I might be climbing. I had visions of them griping that there weren’t any porta-potties at the base of every route. I had visions of them speed-dialing their lawyers when little Johnny finds himself in a pickle with the local wildlife. I had visions of unprepared families, injuries and the subsequent route closures that might very well result. 

When my friend and I parted ways, I rushed home, gathered up the dogs and made the short trip to the woods near my house. Then I buried myself in the trees, venturing off trail just to avoid the sight of another human. The girls and I found a quiet spot, where trees and landscape muffled all but the most persistent of the constant suburban sounds I’ve tried to learn to ignore. There, sitting on a fallen tree in a patch of nature, I watched the pups play, reflected a bit, but mostly just soaked in the solitude. 

Recharged from my time outdoors, I found my mind cleared and my heart less selfish. The woods aren’t mine, became my mantra. I have no right to decide who or how many deserve the privilege. Everybody should have the chance to enjoy the majesty of the wilderness no matter how many noisy rug rats they tow along or how much time they spend on their cell phones catching up with Betty, the next door neighbor, when they should be absorbing the beauty. At the end of the day, we’re just guests, here. We take away what we put into it. Despite the crowds, the noise, the techno-leash indifference, the only ones who really lose out in the end are the ones who don’t take the time to appreciate it and who am I to tell them how they should go about doing so? I can always find a place even further removed. I can always seek out a route to climb with approaches so heinous that the Yuppies simply turn around because their “B’mers” won’t get them close enough to make the walk convenient. 

And there’s always payback in the form of my uncouth, unshaven tail frequenting their Starbucks. Mmmm… Mocha. Surprisingly, I fit right in with the Baristas.

Life is Better Outdoors

Well, here goes nothing. My first blog and it’s about a topic I love; The Great Outdoors.

I decided to start a blog for no other reason than being between outings and bored. Figure I may as well get my thoughts on paper… or monitor… whatever, to keep my mind occupied while I await my next outing.

The weather here in VA has been nothing but boring. Not cold enough to be worthy of comment. No snow. Just mostly cool, sometimes cloudy. It’s an east coast snooze fest (though I understand they’re getting whalloped north of us).

To me, seasons like this are the worst. I like my weather with a bit of tabasco on it. If I’m out in it, I want it to be memorable. That doesn’t mean horrid, just worthy of comment. A beautiful summer day with not a cloud in the sky is still fine providing it has that hard-to-define mood. You know what I mean? It’s that intangible feeling that sets it apart from your regular summer’s day.

But to really get the juices flowing, give me a thunderstorm. Give me blankets of snow. Give me howling winds, ice, hail, sleet with enough gusto to remind me I’m alive.

Not a lot of that around here. And so I’m bored. And so I’m typing. And so maybe something good will come of the lame season here and I’ll finally cater to my writer’s bug with something resembling consistancy. We’ll see.

Rest assured, I’ll be out in it again as soon as I can, savoring what nature gives. There are skiing, hiking, camping trips planned. But for now, and for all the ‘tweener’ days (days between time outdoors) I hope to keep this thing going.

Just a short introduction to me and my passion for life outside the confines of a house. I’ll be back soon with more. Weather *grumble* permitting, of course.