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How to Survive
Every time I step out the door I’m thinking about what I need to do to stay alive. It’s not a dominating thought, it’s a comfortably familiar awareness that has been with me ever since my parents moved my family to a remote part of Alaska when I was six years old. Our first home in this new, raw world, was a floathouse. In this case, it was a regular wood-frame house that had been winched aboard a raft made up of massive logs, formerly ancient trees. It was of the “shotgun” type with one room seguing into the next in a straight line from front door to back door.…
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. . . He Never Said He was a Killer
I was invincible. I had spent the last two years majoring in outdoor recreation at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale and was mentally and physically at the top of my game. I had completed an internship at Touch of Nature Environmental Center assisting in leading hikes, canoe trips, rock climbing and rappelling, and educational programs all over southern Illinois, the Missouri Ozarks, and the Boundary Waters in Minnesota. My very naive, rural, small-town mind had been forever blown. There wasn’t anything I couldn’t do. My can of self-esteem had exploded and was overflowing. I took weight-lifting 101, became an American Red Cross First Aid and CPR instructor, and was certified…
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Hypothermia on the Chilkoot
This week’s extreme temperatures had most of the nation under seige. Fears of frostbite and hypothermia were very real and hearing the word “hypothermia” took me to another season and time when winter temperatures weren’t necessary to be affected by hypothermia. It was summer in southeast Alaska, so the nights were cold and the days were absolute perfection–as long as lots of sunshine isn’t mandatory for your mental health. Three days in a row were the most I saw the sun shine over the three months I made it my home. I had just spent three months of an environmental education internship in northern Minnesota and decided to travel with backpack…
