(originally posted at Sundog Tales)
An early snowstorm and cold front brought some amazing weather this week. This time I decided to capture it on film!
Last week Planet Thrive <a href="http://planetthrive.com/2010/11/mcs-survivalist-guide-part-1/">published an article </a>I wrote on how to survive in a tent during winter. I found the last few days entertaining as I had to live the same advice I had just written about ... especially the times I blatantly went against my own advice! Such as eating half frozen paleo pancakes for dinner when I had no way to get warm afterward - but ohhhh, they were good!
While going through all this, I came across an article about <a href="http://www.bmj.com/content/339/bmj.b4965.full">Leonid Rogozov</a>, a Russian surgeon who in 1961 had to remove his own appendix or die. Admittedly, it made me feel like my own experiences of the last 48 hours paled in comparison, but I also felt a kinship to him.
People tell me that they can't imagine living as I do with these difficulties and hardships. And yet, the same drive to look outside the box for ways to survive and take them in stride is the same drive Leonid would have felt fifty years ago.
I wonder sometimes - is this imperative to live genetically coded in our DNA, or is it a function of something more ethereal and hard to define?
There are many people out there who quickly buckle under stress and become hopelessly lost in a crisis. What is different in my life compared to theirs that has prepared me to be calm and decisive under pressure? As far back as I can remember, I have always been this way.
When I was 9, there was a large earthquake in Los Angeles; it was my first. I went to school like normal and to me it was just another day, more exciting than most, but nothing to worry about. Later that night, my mom told me she had gotten a call from my teacher. I'd been so calm and helpful with the other kids who were crying wrecks, that on a hectic day she was impressed enough to take a few spare moments and tell my mom personally.
Have the same genetics that cause me to be toxically ill from everyday life also given me the strength to survive the devastation they cause? Or maybe the human spirit for survival resides in a less well defined place.
My accomplishments are less dramatic than the stories told of legends and heroes, but it is with these people that I feel a hard won kinship. It fills me with a warm joy and chases away some of the loneliness life has brought me, because I know my feet walk the same path theirs once did.
And I have to wonder, did they also feel the same loneliness that I do?
An early snowstorm and cold front brought some amazing weather this week. This time I decided to capture it on film!
Last week Planet Thrive <a href="http://planetthrive.com/2010/11/mcs-survivalist-guide-part-1/">published an article </a>I wrote on how to survive in a tent during winter. I found the last few days entertaining as I had to live the same advice I had just written about ... especially the times I blatantly went against my own advice! Such as eating half frozen paleo pancakes for dinner when I had no way to get warm afterward - but ohhhh, they were good!
While going through all this, I came across an article about <a href="http://www.bmj.com/content/339/bmj.b4965.full">Leonid Rogozov</a>, a Russian surgeon who in 1961 had to remove his own appendix or die. Admittedly, it made me feel like my own experiences of the last 48 hours paled in comparison, but I also felt a kinship to him.
People tell me that they can't imagine living as I do with these difficulties and hardships. And yet, the same drive to look outside the box for ways to survive and take them in stride is the same drive Leonid would have felt fifty years ago.
I wonder sometimes - is this imperative to live genetically coded in our DNA, or is it a function of something more ethereal and hard to define?
There are many people out there who quickly buckle under stress and become hopelessly lost in a crisis. What is different in my life compared to theirs that has prepared me to be calm and decisive under pressure? As far back as I can remember, I have always been this way.
When I was 9, there was a large earthquake in Los Angeles; it was my first. I went to school like normal and to me it was just another day, more exciting than most, but nothing to worry about. Later that night, my mom told me she had gotten a call from my teacher. I'd been so calm and helpful with the other kids who were crying wrecks, that on a hectic day she was impressed enough to take a few spare moments and tell my mom personally.
Have the same genetics that cause me to be toxically ill from everyday life also given me the strength to survive the devastation they cause? Or maybe the human spirit for survival resides in a less well defined place.
My accomplishments are less dramatic than the stories told of legends and heroes, but it is with these people that I feel a hard won kinship. It fills me with a warm joy and chases away some of the loneliness life has brought me, because I know my feet walk the same path theirs once did.
And I have to wonder, did they also feel the same loneliness that I do?
