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    Heroic Journey: Finding the Will to Survive in the Wilderness
    Heroic Journey: Finding the Will to Survive in the Wilderness
    Heroic Journey: Finding the Will to Survive in the Wilderness
    Ebook66 pages1 hour

    Heroic Journey: Finding the Will to Survive in the Wilderness

    By Kurt Thompson

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    About this ebook

    Wilderness survival guides consistently identify the will to live as the most important factor for overcoming an emergency. Knowledge, skill, and equipment are always considered as secondary. However, the ever increasing number of survival guides rarely devote more than half a sentence to the subject, preferring instead to move on to skill and equipment.
    Survival guides say little if anything about what the will to live is or how to get one. The assumption is that you either have the will to live or you do not. And if not, you are out of luck. Nonsense! For many of us, especially those with PTSD or similar afflictions, the will to live cannot be taken for granted. Yet neither is it unattainable.
    This book is not a conventional survival guide. Heroic Journey: Finding the Will to Survive in the Wilderness discusses the components that make up a will to live and the deeper foundations that make having one possible. We then take a look at the inner workings of how wilderness heals. By using less gear and older techniques without compromising safety, those whose life is a daily struggle can discover and connect with their inner foundations for survival.
    Heroic Journey: Finding the Will to Survive in the Wilderness provides tools to survive not just in the wilderness, but back in the city as well.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherKurt Thompson
    Release dateAug 15, 2016
    ISBN9781370495252
    Heroic Journey: Finding the Will to Survive in the Wilderness
    Author

    Kurt Thompson

    When not working: - Member at MyPTSD.com - Backpacker - Vision quester - Photographer - Writer Now working on short stories and a novel.

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      Book preview

      Heroic Journey - Kurt Thompson

      Heroic Journey: Finding the Will to Survive in the Wilderness

      by Kurt Thompson

      Copyright © 2017 Kurt Thompson

      All rights reserved

      Cover and photographs, copyright © 2017 Kurt Thompson

      Contents

      Too Important for Words

      What Exactly is the Will to Live?

      Core Worth and Positive Life Narrative

      Purpose and Feeling Part of a Larger Whole

      The Heroic Journey

      Original Therapy: How Wilderness Heals

      Minimalism and Self Reliance

      Tracking

      Solo

      Vision Quest

      Your Duty to Return

      Appendix: Educational Resources

      Wilderness Survival and Vision Quest

      Suggested Reading

      Too Important for Words

      Having survival skills is important; having the will to survive is essential.

      –US Army, Field Manual 21-76 Survival

      You can have all the knowledge and kit in the world but without the will to live you can still perish.

      –Lofty Wiseman, SAS Survival Handbook

      The ability for a person to prevail in a survival situation is based on three factors: survival knowledge, equipment, and will to survive. All are important, but the most important is the will to survive.

      –Gregory J. Davenport, Wilderness Survival

      Survival guides consistently deem the will to survive (or will to live) as the most important factor for overcoming an emergency in the wilderness. Skill, knowledge, and equipment are always considered secondary. Lofty Wiseman illustrates the idea in his SAS Survival Handbook with the Will to Live forming the base of a pyramid, Knowledge in the middle layer, and Kit (equipment) forming the apex.

      However, authors of the increasing number of wilderness survival guides rarely devote more than a sentence to the will to live, preferring instead to move right on to skill and equipment. The assumption is that you either have the will to live or you do not, and little more need be said about it. Gregory J. Davenport, in Wilderness Survival, summed it up like this: Unfortunately the will to survive cannot be taught in a book. Increasing your knowledge of survival skills and understanding of related gear, on the other hand, can.

      Some authors have devoted a few additional sentences to the subject. Mykel Hawke’s Green Beret Survival Manual provides his will as an example. Hawke swears that even should he die, his body parts and cells will fight on. Les Stroud’s Will to Live: Dispatches from the Edge of Survival provides examples of how a will to live often makes a difference. Yet these books only reinforce the importance of having a will to survive.

      Others have devoted a great deal of space to survival psychology and how to function in the face of fear. Cody Lundin, in 98.6 Degrees: The Art of Keeping Your Ass Alive devotes several chapters to understanding the physiology and psychology of survival and boils that down into very practical advice for mitigating the effects of fear. Laurence Gonzales, in Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why uses real life accounts to demonstrate the psychological processes at work in emergencies. Many of his examples demonstrate Lundin’s coping techniques in action.

      Still, survival guide authors say little if anything about what the will to live is, and say nothing at all about how to obtain one. The will to survive is taken for granted. For many of us, a will to survive cannot be taken for granted. Books about staying alive in the wilderness and those about healing in it are separated by only a few shelves (or clicks), yet do not seem to influence each other. As someone that has spent nearly my entire life struggling with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), it was disconcerting to read one book and realize that the base of my pyramid was structurally unsound, and read another that said wilderness heals. It was like being told I had no business going where the healing could be found.

      I am far from alone. Those that suffer from disorders like PTSD make up a significant part of the population. About 6.8% will develop PTSD at some point in their lives, due to abuse, war, or other traumatic experiences. Victims of child sexual abuse have a 40% chance of developing PTSD. Roughly 18% of veterans, including those in Special Operations, develop PTSD, which is about the same percentage as adult victims of sexual abuse. These numbers are certainly underestimates due to under-reporting and the culture of silence surrounding abuse issues and mental health in general. Odds are high that either you suffer from one of these ailments or you know others that do.

      With disorders borne of deep psychological scars, a dizzying array of stimuli can trigger debilitating psychological processes. Even in normal life at home, at work, or at school, it can be hard for us to stay calm and think clearly. That makes us vulnerable if an emergency arises. Yet wilderness can heal those wounds. Hence the conundrum: to get out there and safely soak up the healing power of nature, we need to learn wilderness survival skills and we need a will to live. The

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