Life Lessons From the Canadian Wilderness
I went camping in the backcountry last week with two friends. On the second day, I decided to go off on my own. After hiking for 11 hours, I realized that I had taken a wrong turn somewhere. Growing up in LA, my trekking skills must not have been up to par. By the time of my realization, it started to get dark. In the anxious moments, I panic and fall into a stream, lose my backup water bottle, and get my backpack soaked.
In the alpine, it’s hard to recalibrate oneself. My food had started to run out, and with water going the same way, a sense of doom starts to overcome the psyche. After deciding to spend the night in the wind tunnel I was stuck at, I start setting up my tent, when one of the poles snaps. I am left with a broken tent, with one bag of Brazil nuts and less than a mouthful of water in my bag. That feeling comes up again, that this may be it. Like a lot of other people, another hiker succumbs to his death in the Canadian Rockies. My friends, family, coworkers…no one having the faintest clue as to what happened. I shout and yell, at the top of my lungs. No one hears me. I’m away from everyone as far as I can tell.
I eat a couple of nuts, get into my sleeping bag inside my broken tent, and cry. I can see the mountains on either side of me, appearing as behemoths taking me in. I pull out my phone and start recording messages for my friends, my family, the police if they ever find me. It’s only 9 PM and I know that my food is in my bag, in my tent, and not in a bear cache like it should be. I record the last message for my two friends who I’d come hiking with. I’m afraid…of something. The whole night, I stay up, waiting for my inevitable perish. My body shakes and my mind, along with my throat, scream out for help. It’s all infutile. I slowly start to drift away around now.
Around 430 AM, I hear a deep growl, almost like there’s a big dog drooling as it’s coming toward me. I know better than that. I look to my left and see a black bear. It’s going into hibernation soon, and it wants my food before then. I don’t know what to do, so I scream and yell. That seems to work, as it runs back the way it came. For the first time in 12 hours, I realize that I’m not dying today. I pack my tent and start hiking before dawn. In a few hours, I find my way back to the trail and catch up to my buddies.
This is the story of my backcountry trip. It’s scary, traumatic, and possibly idiotic. But, it’s also a lesson. A lesson in who I am. A reflection that there’s a primal being underneath who wants to experience it all once in a while, and if that means getting on a trail by himself and coming face to face with a damn bear, so be it. Most of us live a vapid life, chasing security, comfort, and then wondering where life has gone in our death beds. We research and plan for contingencies, so we can live. But life isn’t lived fully based on research and contingencies. Life is lived fully in the moment. A well researched and contingency filled hike is just a walk. A medicine hike is where one is teetering on the beam of life and death for 12 hours, and at the end, comes out with self knowledge and a killer story. I know what I want.
Here are some of the lessons I brought back from my trip.
1. Follow the Fear
2. Trust your Intuition
3. Friends are Not Permanent
4. The Reality is Rarely as Scary as the Expectation
5. You CAN Survive a Bear, Just with Your Voice
When I was lost, I was thinking of a bear attack all night. I created all these images in my head, each one more gruesome than the last. I built up this idea of death that scared me and didn’t let me relax all night. When the bear did come, my instincts knew what to do, and the reality was much less timid than the fantasy. FDR was onto something when he said that the only thing we have to fear… is fear itself.
In shamanism, a bear signifies strength and confidence. It signifies standing against adversity, taking action, and being a leader. It signifies introspection and independence. I believe that bear carried a message for me.
And I hope that you come face to face with your bear, and feel your primal fear.
