Preparedness

Preparedness is a concept that I have been thinking about a lot lately, especially with all of the recent uncontrollable natural disasters.  The most important question is simply, "Are you prepared?"  however the other side of that question is, "What is preparedness?"

I am attempting to separate out the various arenas of preparedness.  I am not talking about being prepared for slight changes in the weather, or being prepared for a job interview.  I am mostly talking about survivalism in the face of sudden catastrophic disaster.  Something along the lines of a nuclear war, I suppose.  In this instance, there are a few key areas that I think I should consider, and maybe try to improve on.

Mental Acuity
Strength
Endurance
Orienteering
General Usable Skills
Hunting/Trapping
Cooking
Water

So let's just start at the top, and try to describe each one.  Then, I will try to come up with a series of questions that should give you an idea of where you fall in the spectrum of preparedness, as observed by myself.  I am not talking about becoming the ultimate warrior, so most of the markers that I am creating are applicable to both men and women.

Mental Acuity
This is your ability to analyze a situation and come to a logical and rational conclusion.  You don't need to be trained in most areas of survivalism if you are just a generally sharp person who can use rules of science and logic to figure out a problem.  Additionally, this also encompasses your ability to keep a calm head during times of extreme distress.  If you lose it, and start acting like a fool, you will certainly die.
Can you use science and rational thinking to examine a situation?

 Strength
Quite frankly, strength will be extremely necessary if you find yourself suddenly thrust into the wilderness.  There may be situations in which you have to be able to pull yourself up off of a cliff.  Or maybe a boulder has rolled on to a companion, and you need to be able to move it.  Now, some lack of strength can be offset by intelligence (lever and pulley systems), but there may still be situations in which you have to act immediately and with great strength.
Can you do 15 chin ups?
Can you lift a two foot diameter boulder off of the ground?
Can you press at least 135 pounds over head? 


Endurance
This would be the other half of the athletic spectrum.  All the strength in the world will prove itself quickly useless if you suddenly need to run far and fast.  I think that this domain is obvious, as many natural predators may be willing to chase you for more than a mile.  Additionally, in the event of something like an erupting volcano, you may just need to flee.  I suppose it is true that if a predator that is wildly faster than you (think cheetah) is coming upon you, you're sort of screwed.  But if you're being chased by a group of roving cannibals or something, you may stand a chance if you can respond affirmatively to the following questions.
Can you run 6 miles without stopping?
Can you run 6 miles without water?
Can you climb a 30 foot rock face?
bonus: Can you run 100 meters in under 15 seconds?

Orienteering
Orienteering is really the ability to use a map and a compass to determine your location and a route to get where you want to go.  In the case of a sudden disaster though, I assume that you won't have a local map and a compass on you, so this is more about the ability to use geographic landmarks and astronomical figures to determine your bearing and present location.
Can you draw a rough topographical map of everything within sight?

General Usable Skills
This encompasses all areas of survivalism that you ought to know beforehand, instead of trying to figure out on the fly with your mental acuity.  Things such as how to use available materials to braid a rope, how to create an arrow head, and how to carve a spear using rocks.  In the event of complete societal collapse, this may expand to include simple things such as how to build a chair, or dig a latrine.
Can you braid a 15 foot rope using grass and plants?
Can you create a temporary shelter using found wood?

Hunting/Trapping
This one is pretty obvious.  If you find yourself living in wilderness, you'll need to be able to acquire food.  You can get by for a while by foraging berries and edible plants (although, if you don't know how to choose edible plants, you can get yourself in trouble quickly), but eventually you will need to hunt or trap some game.  Some of the other areas come in to play here as well, as you will probably need a spear or boomerang type thing in order to hunt.
Can you track game?
Can you accurately throw a boomerang device?
Can you create a trap for small game?


Cooking
If you manage to capture yourself an animal, do you know how to make it ready to eat?  Some of cooking will depend on the availability of water.  In the greater Phoenix-Tucson area, you can mostly assume that you won't have a great supply of water, so you'll have to cook everything on fire (instead of boiling).
Can you gut and dress an animal?
Can you build a fire using natural materials?

Water
Without water, you will die.  Relatively quickly, too.  There is a certain art to finding water in the desert, or maybe even in a place like a tropical island.  On an island that gets rain, but does not have any real lakes or rivers, you  will have to look first for plants that are designed to capture rain water in their leaves.  If you can't find that, then you better know how to convert salt water to fresh water without the benefit of fire (assuming you don't know how to make a fire, or don't have a vessel to boil water in).  There is a cool distilling method that involves one large tub with salt water, a small cup standing up in the middle of that water, and then a plastic sheet over the top of all of that with a small rock directly over the cup.  You end up creating a very humid type atmosphere inside, and fresh water will condense on the ceiling plastic.  Then, it will congregate and roll in towards the middle (due to the weight of the rock), and ultimately will drip in to the cup in the middle.  Additionally, if the island gets rain, you can use certain obvious capture methods (mental acuity comes into play again).  In the desert, finding water is significantly more difficult, and requires some basic common sense.  The only hint I'll give you is you find a wash.  After that, you're either going to be hiking forever, or digging forever.  Your choice.  There are also a certain few plants that can save you from immediate lack of water death, but I wouldn't count on them as a major source of water supply.
Can you find or make water?

More later...

Chasing Manhood

It's probably true that every man (and many women) wonders at some point what it is to be a man.  Masculinity.  Testosterone.  Other buzzwords.  Some men think that masculinity is modern rape and pillage.  Some women think so, too.  Some men think that masculinity is being able to be a woman, sometimes.  Some women hope this is not true.  There are those of us who see and acknowledge a quantum leap between biological human men and the things that we are now.  While once we performed outrageous feats of strength and athleticism merely as a daily necessity, we now throw up after running 10 kilometres.  Do you hear what I am saying now?

One of my favorite blogs recently pointed out one of my favorite truisms.  Scientists and the such rebuilt Viking longboats and tried to replicate their, um, adventures.  They used Olympic rowers, but found that it was impossible to conduct the same things that the Vikings are documented to have conducted for hundreds of years.  It was too hard for Olympic rowers (considered the best rowing athletes in the world, apparently) to power Viking long ships.  It was too difficult to navigate with their technology.  It was too cold.  Is this registering?  Some of our best living athletes could not even temporarily perform the task that peoples of old routinely performed.  ROUTINELY.  There is something missing.

Has anyone thought about work?  What does this have to do with the world?  What does this have to do with being men, and being women?  What did your money...save?  Prevent?  Create?  I don't think there are answers to these questions, of course.  This is something that most everyone thinks about.  It is related to the question of masculinity.  I think that, biologically, it is very much related.  People like to think of the differences between men and women as being the differences between "Hunters" and "Gatherers."  I don't think that it is this simple, of course.  Cavewomen, as I will refer to them, probably hunted a ton as well.  They were bigger than modern women.  Most muscular.  More like what modern people consider men to be?  Don't know.  The point is that they were well equipped.  They were strong.  They were vicious and biologically inclined, and they killed.  Is killing the key?  I hope not.  Or, at least, if it is, I hope that nature does not abhor a metaphor.  Men killed too, of course.  Until civilization, men killed for dominance.  Men killed for food.  Men killed for sex.  Dominance.  Food.  Sex.  Not necessarily in this order, I suppose, but definitely IN.  To be a man, it appears that you must care about domination.  You must care about food.  And you must care about sex.  Don't be an idiot.  Nothing I ever say is literal.  Unless, I say it is.

It appears that every important thing any man has ever done that was great enough to be remembered by the collective consciousness was done for food, domination, or sex.

What would you kill for?

I am looking for something to dominate.
I am looking for food.
I am looking for sex.

"There must be something we can eat
Maybe find another lover...
...Try to see it once my way
Everything zen...
...There's no sex in your violence"
-Bush

Much Ado About Something ... Again

It recently occurred to me that most people appear to get more and more crazy as they get older, but with the exceptions of senility and dementia I think most people stay the same and society just moves away from them over the years.

Also, I wonder if for those people who really DO go a little crazy, do they know it? Do they recognize it happening? I can so easily see myself becoming more and more obsessive and getting to a point of insanity somewhere in the not too far off future. I have shockingly little control. I mean, I have many times more control than the average person (arrogance), but I also have exponentially more to control. In other words, if they have X amount of control to exert over Y amount of whatever, I have 5X control, and Y^10 amount of stuff to control. Does that make sense? I'll do more with what I have than most people who stretch themselves to their absolute maximum. I'll do that, but I'll leave quite a bit undone, and I'll always wonder why I didn't save the world. Or maybe I'll wonder, "When will the world know that I've saved it?"

I'm looking forward to that calm that I so desperately hope comes with certainty of purpose. I mean, I'm certain that I HAVE purpose, but I don't really have any specifics. Great American Novel? Musical Revolution? Medical Breakthrough? Something much, MUCH smaller? I don't know.

I try to comfort myself with the idea that so many great people didn't become great until very late in their lives, and even then only after doing many horrible things or failing tremendously dozens of times before. I haven't really failed YET, but I see the obstacles already piling up and waiting for me. I feel at once that I have both to choose correctly the path to fortify myself (medical school? peace corps? work at a gas station?) and also to let everything just happen. I mean, I am trying my best to convince myself that this really is a matter of destiny and that I will accrue the necessary tools naturally and in that way will find the exact thing that I am to do.

I sometimes run in to other people who speak like this. People who feel such a tremendous tug towards greatness that they've stopped denying it, and stopped hiding it from everyone. Unfortunately, it's clear that most of these people will probably never achieve what they hope for. I hope that is never me. I can't really imagine much else worse.

I need to find myself living somewhere else.

I'm cleaning out my garage

Parents bought me some plastic shelving, which is perfect. They are lightweight but heavy duty enough to hold hundreds upon hundreds of cd cases and old shirts and novelty underwear and whatever else is floating around my garage. It was important that they be lightweight so that they aren't a super bitch to move when our lease is up (my old shelving was super heavy chromed metal and it was awful to move).

I'm cleaning this garage up. It was already pretty bad, then Louis "cleaned" the house and basically just threw everything from the living room and main house randomly into the garage. So it was almost unbearably messy. Shit everywhere. I walked in and literally said, "Oh, my God. Shit everywhere. There's shit everywhere! Damnit! There's shit on the windows! Oh, my God! My house is full of shit! He shit everywhere! Look what he did! He shit all over the walls! There's shit everywhere!" Or something like that. I don't remember EXACTLY what I said. Whatever.

Anyways, so I'm cleaning that shit and finding crazy old stuff. Like pictures of me from back in the day. And of old friends. And other things. Old clothes. Magazines. Books. CDs. I miss some of my friends that I don't get to see much. I realize that there is a chance that I'll leave for Peace Corps while Leslie is off exploring the world in the way that she has chosen to do so. I found a picture of her from her prom when she wore a blue dress with black bow detail stuff and was very tan and Stevie sort of ruined the picture, but he didn't look all that bad honestly. I found pictures from Cancun of myself with my shirt off. I found pictures from Italy of me and Elizabeth and my hair looks like Anthony Kiedis' hair did a few years ago, although the picture predates that stage of his career. Prom pics with Julee and Co. Fun times. We looked good. That one picture that haunts me of me flexing in front of my dad's car after it was painted. To be back there. I hate not being able to stop looking backwards. Saying more than once that things will change is worse than never knowing that they need to in the first place.

Assorted Pictures

Tucson Day Trip or Miss Jen iii

Went to Tucson today with Adam.

Met with Lesley, the Peace Corps Recruiter.

Found out about Fellows International. Can get giant tuition forgiveness for Peace Corps service.

Love Falafel.

Miss Jen on phone. Coffee tomorrow, no dinner.

She has to babysit.

Told her that I want to take her out sometime also. She said sure.

Havasupai Trip: Wednesday

We wake when we wake. With the sun, I suppose. I have fantastic granola in air temperature soy milk. Very good. Kind of weird though. We prepare slowly, and I strap Chaco sandals to my Camelbak.

The end of camp is punctuated rather dramatically by Mooney Falls. It is the tallest fall that we will see.



To get to the bottom of Mooney, we must descend a rather treacherous path made even more so by my mother's slow movement.




(this one is a shot from the bottom up, the chains are for climbing, as it is pretty much straight up)

We hike past Mooney into some dense greenery that is sort of ridiculous. It is all dominated by what appear to be grape vines.



We were hoping to get to Beaver Falls, but my mom didn't want to do the second chain climb, so we turned around (there is a second - more intense - chain assisted climb later on in the hike to Beaver Falls). We stop and have lunch before turning around.


(this is where we stopped to take a shower)

Havasupai Trip: Tuesday

Tuesday:

We wake up early to shower and eat (peanut butter and jelly sammies and some fruit). We have about 70 miles to drive to the Hualapai Hilltop where we will leave the bags that are to be packed into the canyon on mules. We leave our stuff and head out.

From the hilltop there are some amazing and daunting vistas.

(this picture was actually taken on the last day as we left...the weather was more clear on the first day).

The hike begins with a 1 mile steep descent reminiscent of Squaw (Piestewa) Peak in Phoenix. Then, a 9 or 10 mile flatland hike through small canyons to the Supai village and eventually to the campground below Havasu Falls begins.

The 9 or 10 miles to the village are largely uneventful, and mostly boring looking (other than their vastness), so I didn't take any photos until we started to get into the verdant bottom, where water flows freely. The first 6 miles are just desert desert desert, and then all of a sudden:




(that's water in the bottom right)

We walk through overgrown foliage like this for another 2 miles or so, crossing the creek a number of times. The creek is sourced by melting snow in mountains far away, rain, and water that seeps slowly out of the stone cliffs themselves (more on this later).

Wi'igliva (spelling varies) marks the arrival at Supai. These two stones are supposedly ancient protectors of the Supai.



The Supai village is a little bit of mindfuck. In the words of my dad, "It's got a bit of that 3rd world thing going for it, doesn't it?" This is a fairly accurate description of the shitty attempts at farming, and emaciated horses tied tightly in the sun next to dilapidated houses. The place is spotted occasionally by flowers (cactus flowers are in full bloom during this trip), but the road is heavy heavy sand, like beach sand. The going gets really slow, and our shoes fill up. We stop for a quick bean burrito at the cafeteria, and then proceed. Just outside of the village, we hit our first real water.



This sort of water yields fantastic greenery. We continue:



Here are the first real falls that we found. These peak out of a green cliff side and fall a total of about 50 feet.



Then we proceed another long ways on that beach sand until we actually see Havasu Falls. It is impressive, indeed. This falls a little short of 100 feet I think.



And it forms the first of the famous terraced pools. The water is a sort of luminescent green-blue because of lime deposits in the sand.



Ugh, I'm tired of typing, and hungry. We keep going, get to the camp site, it's packed. We carry our bags in about halfway down a mile long campsite. I rinse off in the river, and we eat and then sleep.

Total mileage for the day: approx. 14 miles.

I look pretty rough before going to sleep:

Havasupai Trip: Monday

Monday:

I wake up at 6:15am to finish packing and go to my parents' house. Ashbaby and Lou Bega had just cleaned the house (aka moved all my shit) so that last little bit of packing took way longer than I expected. This didn't really matter though, as my dad takes forever to do everything, so we didn't hit the road until two hours later than we wanted.

We drive to Flagstaff and eat at an Olive Garden. Cute hostess

We continue through Williams (Road Kill Cafe) to Seligman and eventually to a hotel called Caverns Inn or Canyon Caverns Inn or something. The hotel is located near the Grand Canyon Caverns (which really have nothing to do with The Grand Canyon other than maybe some air from the cavern exits a Grand Canyon wall). We toured these caverns, which are dry (they are no longer growing, probably because of tourism and such). They weren't too bad. Some cool selenite formations, and a dead bobcat, and some 50 year old government rations (the gov't wanted to use it as a fallout shelter during the Cuban missile crisis, so they stocked it with a bunch of crackers and candy and shit). We eat at the cafe there afterwards.