Winter and Folly

The snow is falling lately. Every morning seems to bring a bit more accumulation on the lawn, the cars, the rooftops. I'm already weary of the sight. I crave two wheeled transportation, or at least four wheeled movement on something besides these manicured streets.

Yesterday I finished Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales and I was impressed. He writes intensely in depth on the very specific traits of people who survive adverse situations and those that die pitifully. The book strongly reinforced my belief that cities are inherently false environments and create weak people. Although not an exclusive trend in his research, Gonzales does make note of cities' shortcomings. The expectations for a particular environment that an individual learns, simply does not apply when in most other environments. These expectations coupled with ignorance of powerful forces (i.e. lightening, wind, gravity, freight trains, rushing water, etc.) lead seemingly competent people to make outright wrong decisions and get themselves killed in swift fashion. Just as I would probably walk into a Chicago ghetto and look at the wrong person and die in a blaze of gunfire and ignorance (hopefully taking a few with me), the yuppie walks into the woods of Yellowstone, leaves the trail to take a picture and is found the next morning sitting at the base of a tree with no pulse. Despite the widely different causes (human gangbangers vs. exposure to elements), the underlying cause and result is the same, misjudgement of forces = death. I've never been to a ghetto in Chicago, I only have a vague idea and understanding of such a place. The yuppie may not have either, but certainly the yuppie never expected a simple day hike in one of the most travelled National Parks to end in his demise. I however, have been lost in the woods with no compass, an overcast sky, in the middle of winter, with the sun going down. I understood the forces at work against me and although I didn't make the best choices, I made enough correct choices to remedy the situation without incident.

In any case, the book is a good read. It has a suspenseful and tragic way about it that is difficult to put down. Even when you know how it ends, Gonzales does a good job of making you want to read. Many of the survival anecdotes he draws from are quite famous (Shakelton's crew, Jon Krakauer's Everest disaster) but many are small lesser known examples, many that are ironic and humorous in a dark way. However, the core of the book revolves around Gonzales' father who has an impossible survival story all his own. One that Gonzales pieces together as the book goes along. As a narrative and well researched account, Gonzales does an excellent job with this book, but most impressive is his isolation of exactly the internal traits a person posesses in order to survive where others cannot.