Where My Thoughts Have Been

The past couple of weeks, two separate items have remained in the forefront of my thoughts.

The first is one verse from Miranda Lambert's song Kerosene:

Life ain't hard but it's too long to live it like some country song.

The second is a story I heard a while back but its metaphors are omni-relevant.

A guy named Richard Salinas and his hiking buddy took off one day to the Pisgah National Forest in North Carolina in October of 1990. Salinas was an experienced hiker; I'm not sure about his friend.

From the little information I can gather, this was just meant to be a day hike, probably in the 10 to 15 mile range. Probably snacks, water, and whatever daytime equipment they thought would be necessary were brought with them. Overnight and other emergency items, for whatever reason, were not included.

As darkness approached, Salinas and his friend started to head back to their car which had been left in the parking lot at the trail head.

Somehow, Salinas and his friend became separated.

As temperatures dropped, Salinas, as much as I can imagine, became mentally and physically vulnerable to the elements. He deviated from the defined trail path and became further enmeshed in the wilderness. He became completely disoriented and walked in an opposite direction of the trail head.

As he became more desperate, he also became more weary. He disposed of the few items he had that perhaps could have prevented his hike from becoming fatal.

Three days later, his knapsack and jacket were found deep in the wilderness. His body wasn't found until three months after that; it was found snagged in a bush near the river.

For some reason, I don't find it a sad story, although it is. More than anything, I find it wildly inspiring and deeply didactic.

I became so interested in this story that I looked up pictures of Pisgah. Indeed, it is a very dense forest.

I can easily imagine becoming temporarily disoriented and losing connection with North, East, South, and West - particularly if the sun were not visible. If losing sense of direction were so difficult to do, the compass and more modern GPS units would be unnecessary. After all, they are just tangible reminders of where we are in relation to where we are going.

But what I can't imagine is purposefully deviating from the worn path.

And since I have your attention, here's another story.

The Salinas story was part of a bigger story of Bill Bryson and his buddy hiking the Appalachian Trail. Bryson, like Salinas, was an experienced hiker; his buddy was not.

Bryson would often walk ahead at his own pace, every five miles or so waiting for his companion to catch up. One day, Bryson waited and waited; his friend did not arrive.

Bryson back-tracked several miles and still did not find him. He encountered other hikers who had not seen his friend. Desperate but unable to do anything further, Bryson pitched camp and resumed the search the following morning.

Mid-morning, his friend was found - scratched, hungry, and scared. He lost the path and tried to find his way back. He missed it again and tried to back-track to the point of where he first got lost. Instead, he went deeper into the woods. He walked in all directions hoping to find the path. When darkness fell, he pitched his tent and resumed his self-rescue in the morning. Somehow, he accidentally came across the defined AT trail the next morning, minutes before Bryson found him.

Coming back to the path, Bryson's hiking buddy never stepped foot off it again.

Losing yourself can range from the embarrassing to the deadly. Finding yourself first instills the promise to never do it again.

WWASD?

Again, the convergence of two seemingly unrelated stories has resulted in my banter:

Monday morning, I read a story about a Boy Scout troop being reported as lost after not returning from a weekend hiking trip in the Pisgah National Forest. When I first read the story, I didn't assume the worst even though I automatically thought of the Richard Salinas story as it, too, took place in Pisgah. However, I felt confident that these boys and their leaders would emerge a day or so later certainly tired, but safe. Because they are Boy Scouts.

Obviously, membership in the BSA is not an immunization from danger or harm. Quite the contrary. In part, I believe it to be an educational experience about our earth's natural wonders with training about how to overcome danger and harm while learning about those wonders.

It wasn't until Thursday morning that I read the scouts had returned safely to civilization.

Upon finding themselves lost, they did the first thing vital to rescue - they remained calm. More importantly, they had already performed one of the most important steps in case rescue became necessary - they carried sufficient food, water, and shelter. Simple lesson but one often overlooked.

Wednesday evening, the same day these kids emerged from the woods, I watched part of the Democratic debate in Des Moines. Tim Russert asked Governor Richardson if elected president, whether he would resign his ex officio seat as Honorary Chairman of the BSA out of protest. The governor was adamant that as president, he would not belong to any organization that discriminates for any reason. Even though as governor, he doesn't support same-sex marriage. Instead, he would choose to discriminate against those he accuses of discrimination.

I'll admit to only hearing half his answer. For the second half, I reminded his image on my television set that anybody who doesn't like the Boy Scouts won't get my vote. I also reminded him that this issue had already been settled seven years ago by our nation's highest authority. BSA is a private organization that, by virtue of the First Amendment and in the absence of any statute to the contrary, is allowed to mandate the standards of its membership. New Jersey was sufficiently ineffectual in its argument that the BSA is a public accommodator in submission to a lab-like public experiment Justice Brandeis wrote of in 1932.

To use the words of my favorite president, Andrew Shepherd, - Show me that, defend that, celebrate that in your classrooms. Then, you can stand up and sing about the "land of the free".

I do know this much. Were I lost and had my choice of hiking companion, I'd choose the Boy Scout over the politically correct do-gooder every time.