| Story Views | |
| Now: | |
| Last Hour: | |
| Last 24 Hours: | |
| Total: | |
Remember the Little Things, by Bear
This is not your typical “How To… for Survival” or “Best Gear for Survival” blog article. Instead, I am asking you the reader, to read this with an open mind. This is much more than that and I believe it will be the difference between you surviving… and not.
Nothing can take away from the importance of being prepared. Nor can the necessity of training and practicing certain survival skills be trivialized. Preparedness and practice are a couple of necessities of survival. But there is more to life than just surviving. the famous psychiatrist, Viktor Frankl, summed it up best when he said, “everything can be taken from a man or a woman but one thing: the last of human freedoms to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” What is life, truly, if there is no enjoyment? While I do understand that standing in your stockpile room, surveying all of your supplies (the stacks of water bottles, the vast array of number 10 cans, the gun safe with all its hidden treasures, the neatly organized bug out bags, etc.) can bring a certain satisfaction, it is quickly fleeting. That is because you spent so much time and effort compiling these things and now your mind is running through the completed checklist, making sure you didn’t miss anything. Nope, it’s all done… so now what? (Cue that emptiness thing from earlier) The intangibles like relationships and the joy they bring will be just as important in a bold new world as the tangibles like your stockpile. I had the opportunity to learn this, quite humbly I might add, the hard way recently when I took my 9 and 15 year old sons on a backpack adventure for four days. My intent was to teach them practical skills while knocking the rust off of my own. But as Robert Burns said, “The best laid schemes of mice and men oft go awry”.
I began our adventure 48 hours prior by utilizing my Army training and conducting PCCs (pre-combat checks) and PCIs (pre-combat inspections). Yes, I know that this was not combat, but the fundamentals of preparedness are never-the-less just as applicable. I went over every item in my boys’ packs with them so that they understood what it was and how they will be utilizing it. I showed them how best to pack their gear by having repacking mine before them. At this point, I left them to repack their stuff a couple of times (so that they were comfortable with where they put their gear). The night before we left for the woods, we did one final walk-through to make sure we weren’t missing anything. As my 9 year old starts to lay out his gear, he is coming across a deck of cards and a pack of dice. I, being the prudent and pack-weight conscious man that I am, proceed to lecture him about how extra items mean extra weight that he has to carry with him everywhere and that he needs to leave them out.
Source:
