If you're gonna be dumb, you'd better be tough.
Rites of passage are important. Challenge and stress and triumph are vital for young people to develop. A bunch of adult children running around throwing tantrums over micro-aggressions will be the death of us as a society if we let them. Resilience doesn't come from a powerpoint briefing or a few minutes with a motivational speaker, and we are deluding ourselves if we think it does.
When I fell in Mad River late in the spring of 2022 way out in the middle of nowhere and it took me 2.5hrs to get out alone and there was real danger of death from exposure, to say nothing of having to walk 15 miles for help....all I could think was, "Thank god this isn't SERE or Ranger school." I've been badly hypothermic. I've gone for days without food. I've actually faced death up close. The limits of human endurance are familiar to me. Other crises quickly shrink to manageable endeavors when you have that experience and background. This is why you see me in the video, irritated but calm and laughing at the stupidity of what had just happened. I wish more people in the US had similar opportunities. We are stronger than we think.
Backstory: I'd been working on multi-purpose trails (hiker, MTB, moto, horse) out in this area. Our base camp was 15 miles away from where this occurred, which is about a 40-min ride. It was starting to rain and we had flood warnings based on both snow melt and the rain further up in the mountains. It was late afternoon on our last day, and not wanting to work our way back out both in a downpour and the dark, it was time to go.
We shut down and parked the excavator, then I moved and waterproofed and stashed all the equipment, and was headed back to camp solo. I was "right behind ya", so my partner had departed just ahead of me. But then, I heard it. The call. You know the one. "Just one more loop!" "Go one more time!" Yup, that call.
"Hey, we're really close to the terminus of this project. We've almost broken through! It can't be but another half mile. You should take the saw and clear the rest so the machine can move through faster!" Well duh, you know what I had to do...
A half hour later, I'd cut through the bigger deadfall and opened the trail enough to proceed to what I thought was the end. It was smooth sailing, until, in a split second on a very narrow section with a steep drop down into the river, a branch popped out and speared me in the shoulder and bicep. I was moving at a walking pace, but with a heavy Stihl MS500i chainsaw on the front of the bike, a pack on my back, and a day's worth of accumulated fatigue...that branch startled me enough that I whiskey-throttled and fell off the back of the bike. The bike went UP. OVER. And DOOOOOOOWN. It came to rest in the water and was actually moving under the power of the current by the time I'd rolled over, collected my wits, and scrambled the rest of the way down the embankment.
I'm still recovering from a really gnarly set of bilateral carpal tunnel and cubital tunnel surgeries. It had already been a long day and I was cold and wet. My hands ACHED. My grip strength is not yet what it should be and I'm 25lbs heavier than my normal fighting weight after being couch-bound and feeling sorry for myself for months, so I was pretty worried that I was screwed from the get-go. Healthy me would have been challenged here. Fat, hurt, and tired me? Oh woe is me!
Taking advantage of the initial shot of adrenaline, I dragged the bike a few feet to safety and then started pondering my options. Going up was not one of them. The walk to phone signal would have been nearly 6 miles with some very significant climbing. The walk to camp would have been nearly 15, which is a minimum 4hr hike and likely closer to 5--which would be in the dark. Staying in place would net me nothing, as this trail is currently abandoned and won't see any traffic for at least 4 days. All of those decisions would likely result in the loss of my bike in the rising flood waters of the river. Indeed, just while looking around, I could swear the water had come up a couple inches. It quickly became clear to me that, while it would be a monumental pain in the ass, self-recovery would be the best of a bad bunch of options.
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