A tale of omens, heat exhaustion, and a lost dog.
I awoke at 7:30am and the gathering gloom on the Western horizon meant one thing: a storm was coming. A quick check of the weather indicated that I had about 90 minutes to complete my task before the skies opened and I was forced to relive the shame of my failed survival venture, so I set out.
I climbed back up the mountain to my campsite, the mist hanging heavy over the land.
The night before there had been some confusion. My brother was insistent that I was looking for trillium, a dark green plant native to the area. I recognized the leaves from previous outings, but was skeptical about it being the identity of the miracle cure. Intent to double check before setting out, I had done some research on plants native to Georgia. Sure enough, I was not looking for trillium, instead I was looking for Pipsissewa, the “one who breaks into small pieces”, colloquially dubbed: “Striped or Spotted Wintergreen”. According to tradition, its tea was utilized by natives to the Eastern US to treat gall and kidney stones. The memories came flooding back as I recalled how our survivalist friend had likewise recommended the remedy.
“Bingo.”
As I reached my derelict campsite, I was shocked to discover that not 48 hours earlier, as I was sitting beneath my tarp contemplating my own hubris, I was likewise sitting but a few yards away from this beautiful plant. I had never noticed it before; the detail of its striped dark-green leaves had never been properly defined for me. I had never truly “seen” the plant before I had been made aware of its presence on the property. That had now changed, however. Even now, years later, I know that I will never mistake the plant for anything other than “Pipsissewa,” it has been defined, and has become a part of my wilderness knowledge-base. I cannot go back into those woods without seeing the plants and recognizing them for what they are.
I set about my work.
Though not endangered in Georgia, I was concerned about over-harvesting, and made a mental note to only harvest a small portion of what I found, and leave the majority to continue germination and propagation on the property.
As I made my way back to my car, the skies finally beginning to drizzle and then pour, but my mission was complete.
I returned home, dehydrated the leaves in the microwave, unsure if it would be effective, and delivered them to my brother. His kidney stones cleared up within 24 hours of him drinking the tea. A bona fide medical miracle courtesy of the North Georgia mountains.
Reflecting on this outing, three years later, I see something new. Just as prior to that outing I had never “paid attention” to the plants around me, so too did I not “see” the lesson that I should have learned then and there. I should have learned to be more perceptive, to pay attention, and be open to the complexity and nuance of the world around me. Of course, instead of learning this lesson, I reveled in my own ego, sharing images of the plant on social media and writing out some pithy statement on how beautiful nature was, all the while attempting to cast myself as a survivalist and wizened mountain man. If I had only known then what I know now.
A curious quirk of the human mind is that our perception is often extremely shallow. There is an unfathomable number of details present in our environments at all times, and while we may think we are aware of them, we are by-and-large extremely ignorant creatures. We need things to be brought to our attention. We need things to be defined before they emerge from the backgrounds of our lives.
You’re now aware of your blinking and breathing patterns, despite their usual autonomy, by the way.
Sorry about that.
It would be a wonderful thing if the things we were ignorant of merely consisted of minutia, but in my particular case I had already begun to walk down a path towards self-deception and destruction. The warning signs were there, but I wasn’t paying attention. I had yet to be made aware of them.
My friends would return to Atlanta to visit their family and ask me if I was in town. I would tell them, “yes,” but then proceed to wax-poetic about how “the trails called my name, and I found myself living a life fractured—torn between the city and the wild. Though both one and the same, the former a liar unto itself, and the latter, a teller of truth and a messenger of wisdom.”
It’s hard to read some of my writing from this time merely because I see how foolish I was being, and how wise I thought myself to be in the moment.
By the end of July I had gone on six different camping trips, each time returning invigorated, restored, and all-the-more self-assured of where God was leading me and how I was learning deeper truths about the world around me.
It was all very short-lived.
Each Monday, my day-to-day life would grind me down once more and I would begin thinking about my next outing, and how it was necessary to preserve my sanity. How I was returning to the natural state of things and communing with God in mankind’s natural territory.
I began to contemplate Mankind as a servant-master; capable of rending and destroying, but choosing not to. True leadership and power, I reasoned, is not in its exercise, but in its restraint. By yielding such power does its wielder honor himself—do not take as you see fit—do not destroy on a whim. If only we, as humans, had such capacity for patience. What kind of a world would we live in?
What good is the ability to move mountains in search of an ultimate goal if, day by day, that proverbial Everest is found on a new continent? Despite our best judgment, each dream we devise for ourselves pales quickly in the face of its attainment. When we achieve what our hearts have longed for, how quickly do we set our eyes to a more distant peak, so quickly forgetting and reassuring ourselves that “next time, things will be different. Next time, I will truly be happy?”
What joys do we forego in the interim as we strive to attain that which will never fulfill? What true blessings do we overlook in our quests for that we believe will make us whole?
It is best to wait. To be patient. To relish the journey. To be still.
And is this not the Nature of God?
Slow to anger, but quick to mercy?
Willing to wait.
Willing to wait on us, if only we would turn from our own ways to devote our hearts to something truly transcendent and eternal.
If only I had seen it then.
I returned to nature because I saw it as a church. All of creation reflects the Love of God, the Nature of God—for the Creator crafted it all. I found communion among the trees—which the Cherokee called the “Standing People”—to be more refreshing and connecting to the Divine than a standard church service.
I knew that community was important—but all my roads lead back to the Lord my God—through the woods.
This was folly.
Though I had scorned society, I was participating in my own lonesome way.
We live in a hedonistic society, eager to indulge in every whim.
We talk a big game, but yes, even those in the church indulge, and often in even greater ways than those whom we seek to save. We live on the precipice of devastation, blithely dancing closer and closer to the edge.
We do not live in civilization; we live in the wilderness. What we dub “civilization” is but a veneer of agreed upon non-hostility and harmony that occurs when large groups of people gather and form governing bodies—a form of self-preservation, yes, but a veneer all the same.
Make no mistake—civilization has no meaning when its citizens cease to recognize it.
If there comes a day, God help us, when the world that we know ceases to be and the safety net that we take for granted is plucked from beneath us… it is to the wilderness that we will return. And yet, we’re already there.
We are but far-advanced versions of our primordial ancestors: still dwelling in our huts, still gathering in our long-houses, albeit ones not of mud nor stick, but of brick, mortar, concrete, and steel.
It is unbecoming of a man to forget the distinct role that he plays in the world around him—and to forget that beyond the skyline of our totems to “progress” lies a world that has remained unchanged—not untouched.
You see, the Earth never remains untouched. Mankind has wrought its footprint into the Earth since the beginning. Yet, the Earth never ceases to be what it always has been:
It adapts. It copes. It addresses each problem in turn.
But its nature never changes.
I think back on the Cherokee Marker Trees that I chased through the woods.
They still stand. The old ways are still relevant. The land and the world we dwell in still moves on, no matter how we try to tame it or build our towers to the heavens in an effort to overcome it.
I followed the trees, one to another, then onward down the path.
The Cherokee may have been gone from the land, but their culture remains long after their evictors have passed on.
Nature has grown up around the trees, and over the trails they marked—but the trails are still there. The trees are still there. Nature has adapted, but is not untouched.
We can learn much from our forebears, those who had not the folly in mind to attempt to “tame the earth”, but to abide in it. Those who realized their place in the grand march of time. For all of our book learning and cultural wisdom, for everything that we have accomplished, we are still existing in the world we entered at The Fall. The outskirts of Eden. No less dangerous, no less foreboding, though perhaps more threatening in this age when comfort and content has usurped more primordial aims.
Yes, we live in a hedonistic society, eager to indulge in every whim, and the wilderness had become a drug for me, an idol, and I was chasing it with the best of them.
What is a man? A beast capable of great things: conquering, destruction, war, devastation; capable of dominating the land.
But, ultimately, a beast, a created thing, yet the only created thing most capable of caring for the land—so able to destroy, yet given the option to care, to cultivate.
To be a servant master.
This is one lesson from the book of Genesis: mankind’s role as steward of the land. It is a gift, and it is a deep sin to abuse it.
A wise man who I consider to be a mentor called this logic atavism, the tendency of an organism to revert to “old ways”. I’m not a science buff, but my understanding is that it occurs when a being reverts to traits last manifested several generations prior.
I wondered, then and now, if this is perhaps why I felt so at home in woods?
Had the recessive genes won out in me, bringing forth a genetic woodsman doomed to the flesh of a bloated modern man?
Whatever the reason, my path was chosen and set. Despite all evidence to the contrary, I believed myself to be a wise man, and I was determined to continue down the trail, come what may.
My next outing, I resolved to backpack to my old camp, devising a path over a mile in length around and up the steep side of the mountain to strengthen my back and burn calories. With me, as always, was Bear.
I was reminded of my claim, but a quarter mile into the hike into camp, that Bear was a wild animal, and that he walked beside me as a token of respect as a member of his pack, when he vanished into the woods chasing after I know not what.
I continued on, content in the knowledge that he would return to my side—but his ubiquitous absence as I reached the river and began my ascent of the mountain was not unnoticed.
I paused often to call him by name, but he would not come. I resolved to finish my hike, to reach my camp, and so I did, though the victory was shallow without my friend.
This was odd.
Never, and I mean never, had Bear’s ventures off the trail lasted to the point that I was unescorted to my destination. By now, history had shown, he should have returned.
Strange—but no matter.
I would camp tonight atop the mountain. Perhaps, this outing, I would finally make the fire I so desperately craved a few weeks prior. My woodpile was still there, dry now, and I struck it with my walking stick to flush out any snakes that might dwell within.
SNAP.
A second omen.
My walking stick, bearing Psalm 46:10, pyrographed into its frame by my own hand prior to its staining, snapped in two. I had become accustomed to walking with a stick, especially through undergrowth and over rough terrain. To go on without it in such conditions was nothing less than insane to me. I had not prepared for that.
I knew that interpreting such events as “signs” was wrong, but a flash of storyteller’s dread, the tendency to read too much into such things, kicked in all the same.
I was running low on water and carefully picked my way down to the spring to replenish my stores. The night before I had noticed that I was running low and reasoned that packing in less water than I needed would force me to become stronger in the face of adversity.
But upon reaching the stream, I discovered another omen:
My water purification tablets had been ruined at some point in the interim between outings. There were but three usable tablets. I needed eight. I could not sustain myself in the wild this outing.
I was stranded, without water, and still needing to find my dog, on a 160+ acre parcel of forest, in the middle of the mountains.
“Stupid Greenhorn,” was my only response, grunted through clinched teeth and chapped lips.
I knew the risks, I knew the score, it was a rookie’s mistake to trek in with no real means to survive. I should have damned well known what I had before packing it in.
I knew that I must find water, or die—yet still Bear was lost to me—and the grade to the springs was steep—too steep to travel without my staff, which I had relied on for many outings— and not to mention that I was breaking in a new pair of boots…
“Stupid. Greenhorn.”
Indeed. Stranded, in the wild, with a 50 pound pack, new shoes, no means of attaining water that would be reasonably safe to drink… and without a walking stick.
I was dead.
It didn’t help that the heat of the day was setting in. I had to find Bear and drink water if I was to survive. Since I was a kid, I had read survival guides and Boy Scout Handbooks: if you don’t have water, eventually—and this is an inevitability—your brain is going to cook as your body takes water out of it to survive.
This is your brain on dehydration.
I walked down the creek valley, following the slightest grade possible, unsure of my footing, until I reached the trail and set out to the last spot that I had seen Bear.
There had never been an outing on which he had disappeared for so long. Something was wrong.
After much hiking, I collapsed.
It was the damned unbearable heat.
I reached for my day-pack, desperate, perhaps I had forgotten something.
Sloshy weight. Liquid weight. My reserve bottle, so easily forgotten, was filled to the brim.
Let me tell you this: water hath no taste to any but a dying man—and to him, it is sweetness itself.
I drank from my reserve bottle and thought of the task at hand: the “What-ifs?”
What if I have to treat a wound?
What if Bear’s dead?
What if I have to take his life in mercy?
Bear’s absence was so foreign to the point of being disconcerting. I cried out to him again:
“BEAR!”
And then a whistle—that which he understood to mean, “Come here!”
Nothing.
A last ditch effort, I readied my gun, a snub-nosed .38 Special like you’d see in an old detective picture he would come if I fired off a round…
CLICK.
Great…
Sure enough, the gun was jammed.
I struggled with the ancient .38 until its hammer cocked—all the while cursing my folly–
I hadn’t even checked my gun…
Finally… success.
BAM!
One shot.
“Bear!”
Nothing…
BAM!
Another shot…
“BEAR!”
Nothing…
That was that.
He was either hurt or dead.
And then reality set in…
I had to trek through the wilderness, down his own trail, to find him. When I did, whatever state he was in, I had to deal with it, even if it meant a reenactment of “Ol’ Yeller” right then and there.
4:30pm. The heat of the day, peaking at 90 degrees according to my watch—and me with no staff, little water, and a rescue mission on my hands.
Wasn’t I supposed to be exploring or something?
“He couldn’t have gone far,” I lied to myself, noting the contour of the land. I, as a fool, ditched my pack on the trail and descended into the valley, trailing a deer path all the way down to the river.
Except Bear wasn’t down at the river. Dammit.
But what was there was beauty made real—cliffs, plains, water, foliage. I was in awe of it: an unexplored piece of land in the midst of a property that I claimed to know cold.
I listened: no bark, no struggle, no whimper… if Bear was here, he was either dead, or long gone.
I resolved to dwell in the latter, and traced my way through the valley, utterly consuming the beauty that surrounded me, fighting back heat exhaustion all the while.
I found the trail once more, reflecting on how sweet the water tasted, and realizing that so many good things in life share this attribute, such as forgiveness meaning nothing to anyone but to one who has damned their soul.
I resolved to double back, to return to my car, the day was done. I’d have to regroup and return later.
I crested the hill and saw, to my astonishment, Bear, waiting by my car, gaping at me stupidly as if puzzled by my absence.
“You son of a bitch!” I exclaimed with absolutely no irony.
We shared the reunion of a pack, glad to be together, accepting one another’s diverging hunts.
I spent the night, Bear standing guard, by the car and returned to the city at noon.
I was done for the weekend… or so I thought.
That night I got the urge to head back out into the wilderness, and this time, with a companion. I had gotten a phone call, you see, and along with it a new direction down the trail and towards certain destruction.