I was listening to an Audioslave song earlier on one of my many MP3 CD's. It's a song most people have heard, it was even featured in the new James Bond movie. Overall it's a good tune but one line seemed to stand out more than the rest.

"Arm youself because no one else here will save you."

It's a great line for so many reasons. The main part of it that hit me was how true it rang in my life in particular. Independence, self preservation, calculative thinking, whatever you want to call it, is highly lacking in most people these days. The only reason I'm alive today, and for years to come, is due to my own ability to "save myself". My lifes work, on and off season, requires this trait by nature.

In the summers I work as an initial attack fire ranger out of northern Ontario. We are the best trained forest fire rangers in the world (hoowah, lol) and work in crews of three people. Even though there are three of us on a crew we tend to work alone a lot in the bush. One man will be humping gear through the bush, another is starting the pump, and another is checking out the fire, communicating with overhead, or directing air attack. If something happens and you are alone you have to be able to fend for yourself or you are done. Something as simple as slipping on a log with 80lbs of gear on can end it. I remember a good example from my first year in the program. I was starting the pump and was walking on a floating bog. A floating bog is what it sounds like, a mattress like layer of grasses and debris floating on a lake of sludge and water. I was working at the "edge" of the mattress like layer trying to get the pump to prime and failing miserably. I peered into the "water" and could see a soft muddy bottom not even 3 feet under the water. Needing to prime the intake I stepped off and into the water to get at the end of it, first mistake.

I dropped over the edge and never even hit bottom. The mud on the bottom I could see was a super-saturated water\bog mix almost exactly like quick sand-mud found in the amazon. As I fell forward and went over my head I began kicking violently as if to swim (in full gear no less), second mistake. All I did was work myself deeper and well over my head. At this time I also began being sucked under the mattress layer, much like someone falling through the ice and then being pulled under and away from the hole they went through. I could have panicked further and dug myself in deeper but I didn't. I slowly turned myself around to face the mattress layer which now was heading above my head. I grabbed upwards to it and dug my fingers in and pulled slowly and steadily. It let loose slowly and I began to rise, I got my head back up and kept pulling upwards without kicking my legs. Slowly I inched my way back up, now covered (and being circled by) leeches and some form of beetle to this day I cannot name. I dragged myself back up and onto the top and in my last few pulls I did end up kicking my feet and felt my boots kick something hard, but soft at the same time, it could have been a rotten log or a dead moose, both are prevalent in these types of swamps.

The only reason I survived and did not drown was that I kept a clear head and managed to pull myself to safety. Knowledge and ones ability to calm yourself when in a dire situation are both weapons used to fight for survival in this world.

In the winters I work as a trapper in the forests north of my town. There is no one out there whatsoever. The roads aren't even maintained in the summer, let alone plowed in the winter. Snowmobile access only, and I stress only. Even with snowshoes you'd be lucky to make it back alive due to the sheer distance alone (70km straight line to the nearest person). Winters are harsh and the food chain is in effect up there. One wrong move, a bad corner taken too fast, or a poorly maintained machine (truck, sled, ATV, etc) and you are left with few options. If you can't improvise, or fix something on the fly (sometimes a sled, in 6 feet of snow, in the darkest pitch black imagineable, in -35 deg NOT counting windchill) you can't save yourself. Sometimes animals caught or killed have friends. Wolves travel in packs, sometimes the pack does not leave one behind and will remain close. It can be un-nerving when you catch or kill a wolf and you can hear it's pack circling in the forest around you and the only reason nothing has happened yet is because they are deciding if you are a formidable opponent or not. Sometimes life is decided on very thin grey lines, maybe because you smell of gasoline, or because they heard your gun, or because you have a strange colour on they haven't seen before, they won't attack. Or maybe because they are starving, have disease ridden minds, or just because of territory they will become aggressive and move in.


Arm yourself because no one else here will save you. How true.


Sorry for the ramblings, just a strange look into the other side of my lifes work.