GoRuck Navigator
November 2016
Sometimes an experience is valuable because it shows you how much you have to learn. The distance between where you are and where you imagine you are (or would like to be). I expected that the 3 day Navigator would teach me core bushcrafting skills with focus on compass and map. And it did. I cant imagine you could find better instructors than the 3 cadre (the folks running the program) - both in terms of life experience and in terms of sharing thought processes and pure knowledge. All the lectures were given without notes and in conjunction with doing. It is a really well thought out program.
For me though - I soon realized there were mental obstacles to overcome that were more primary than skills with knife, rope, compass. My mistakes in navigation or shelter building were not just ones of knowledge or technique but had more to do with the inability to deal with moments of uncertainty and doubt. I work in a tech field and a common acronym is FUD - the dank trinity of mistakes (fear-uncertainty-doubt) and a precursor to FUBAR (repurposed from its origins in the military.)
I ended up on the wrong side of a stream (clear enough on the map); I miscounted steps; I guessed at features and made them ‘fit to’ the map. What was the consequence of these mistakes? Not much. I eventually made it back in all three cases. In addition I had a nice little orange device on my pack with a button (someone christened ‘Obama shaking hands with Trump’) which would have unleashed a rescue of the cadre on ATVs.
It never got to that. I was never hurt, wet - nor in any specific danger. Hiking through fine woods, occasionally seeing turkey or red squirrels - just being there was good. Focus and mental discipline were the things. Simple really. Years ago in high school football, gravelly coach voice “practice like you play”. I thought to myself ‘yeah, yeah’ and went back to thinking about girls or who was the better guitarist Page or Clapton or any of the goofy things that filled my mind. And it is not much different today - just have different things to think about and project neurotically about.
One evening I was supposed to transport fire in a useable form. I liked this task in part because it reminded me of the ending of “No Country for Old Men” - Toomy Lee Jones as the sheriff describing something. His words are pretty much verbatime from Cormac McCathy’s story so you can get them there as well.
Cadre Chris had taught us about a shelf fungus that grew in certain conditions. If you started a coal with it, it burned slowly. I packed the container in the picture above with birch bark to both shield the smoldering fungus and to provide tinder, I tied this with paracord to my pack and set out. I could smell the fungus so i knew it was burning. I checked it from time to time as I walked. It burned a bit faster than I expected so I found and added another piece. It worked for a while and I felt glad.
I started thinking about the exercise and imagining how it might be in reality. Imagine needing to transfer fire like this; imagine someone at the other end needing it. Just for a few moments, but then distracted I lost count. I backtracked to a known point and started back but noticed the glow in the fungus has stopped. I blew for a while to try and bring it back but it was gone. Partly I felt like stopping and reigniting it - but that was a stupid idea as the challenge was to simply carry the fire from point A to point B (with a few subpoints in between).
I felt like a total asshole. ‘I had one job’. A subtle lack of focus because I was thinking about the importance of the task but not on the present moment at hand.