Some time ago, I mentioned a backpacking trip as a basis for a couple of pieces. And then a shitstorm came and I had to put those pieces on hold. Now I return to this. Within this trip was a series of experiences that I'm going to describe, which will provide a series of vivid and simplified images that will help to elucidate some concepts I want to make use of in future pieces, with theoretical and then practical implications. So let's get started.
First, I want to start with "wilderness." In the future I intend to continue fleshing out a concept of wilderness that I started working on previously, but for now we'll maintain a limited focus on one aspect of it: one thing that a wilderness does is subject you to forces you aren’t used to controlling or influencing. The more extreme the forces, the more they produce in you their reflection: they show you the wilderness within.
Because for the average person living in the modern developed world - or any kind of routine living environment for that matter - one is accustomed to a certain daily baseline of conscious experience that is dependent on a well-maintained and controlled built environment. What you consciously experience is based in part on what your external environment regularly presents to you as a sort of baseline experience. Even this baseline can be changed, due both to external, environmental factors, and to internal, personal factors, which I want to get deeper into at another time.
But my point is that if you seek out a wilderness, or an autonomous environment not under direct conscious control, you can experience things that you don't normally experience in a built environment, which in turn can call forth conscious experiences that you might not have had before. Which evokes forces and structures that were in you but that you might not have been fully aware of. And perhaps most disturbing for the modern executive-led subject, because these things exist beyond your conscious awareness, they also tend to exist beyond (and resist) your executive control.
Given a little of this background, you can see now why something like a wilderness vision quest would become a traditional tool for initiating someone into adulthood, or a number of other culturally constructed states of being. But there's a lot more to it than that. Sticking to the backpacking focus: a backpacking trip is one way to pursue these wilderness experiences in a controlled manner, by entering into and easing into a wilderness well-provisioned and well-prepared. This can get a little more complicated (and the effects more pronounced) though the more wilderness you have in the mix, such as if the wilderness you are going into is more vast and more extreme, or if there is an ascendance of the wild element in you.
This is part of the reason that most backpacking trips - however profound and enjoyable they can be - don't usually produce the kind of earth-shattering experiences that lead to life changes for most people. And by the same token, this is also part of the reason that a traditional vision quest will involve some sort of set of rituals and/or bodily deprivation (or a powerful hallucinogenic) to juice that coveted process of self-discovery. There are other more accidental ways to intensify a wilderness experience of course.
Previously I mentioned bodily dysfunction that can be partially attributed to Long Covid. This dysfunctional body must be cared for with a good diet among other things, and the surrounding environment and life circumstances should be maintained within a certain acceptable range of stability as possible.
This is because the autonomic cluster of disorders that reside under the Long Covid umbrella - along with many other similar types of autonomic nervous system disorders - is largely a disorder of disequilibrium. Any kind of change, like various metabolic processes, changes in atmospheric pressure, air temperature, environmental and social stress, generalized inflammation, and so on, can trigger disruptive autonomic nervous system dysfunctions such as heart problems, body temperature regulation problems, breathing problems, and other disruptions of very basic bodily functions that we take for granted, which usually work in coordination to guide the body smoothly through changes in equilibria as we live our daily lives.
So what happens when you place a lot of strain on that dysfunctional body? What happens when you dramatically alter a given condition of equilibrium? At certain points over the last couple of years, I've had enough intersecting stressors of emotional distress, dietary strain, environmental changes, internal dysfunctions, and etc. that my body would behave as a late Roman polity: ready to rebel en masse at the slightest insult. At one point I ended up in the emergency room after it got bad enough.
Knowing this, why the hell would I risk a backpacking trip in this condition, which could be quite dangerous? See, I got to a point where I was feeling pretty good: the Long Covid was starting to die down and I was feeling more robust, and I was invited to go on a three day backpacking trip that I had wanted to do for some time. One has to live one's gatdanged life after all. Well, it turns out the Long Covid was definitely still there.
Part of the problem with this shit is that it sneaks up on you. A single stressor may provoke a response in your body that is relatively manageable, but because that response is manageable, it tends to be suppressed and one doesn't alter one's behavior or course too much, just as other stressors are building up, and quietly the body's resent grows, until enough is enough, and the entire thing goes at once. What you would call a "flareup" or "episode" or some such.
Without getting too far into the nitty gritty, we embarked on this trip right on the heels of a busy and stressful end-of-season. Not a lot of time to pack or prepare. If one is planning on multiple nights out, one has to take some time to prepare one's backpack. You want to make sure you have the right supplies for the trip: food, water, spare clothing, a tent, a sleeping pad, a sleeping bag, lights, emergency supplies, etc. This was in October, so we had to be ready for freezing temperatures and rain and/or snow.
This was Rainier National Park we were talking about, and we were planning on going up past the snowline, up to 8,000 feet or so. The park is known for its rugged landscape and intense, unpredictable weather, especially after the tipping point past the summer tourist season. My hiking companion had been before up to the same area, and around the same time in the season, and spoke of a time in which he was hit with a surprise storm that ushered in shearing winds that shredded his tent in the middle of the night, and so he had to bail at sunrise. So the packing list was a little more critical.
One can also overpack, which is a problem as well. These backpacks can get really heavy fast, and a really heavy pack is really taxing if you're going long distances with any kind of elevation gain. Theoretically, your bag is not supposed to weigh much more than 20% of your body weight, but realistically, that theoretical number is one of the ways that the outdoor sports industry sells you expensive ultralight gear. If you're going old school, there is a very basic set of necessities that you must take, which can be heavy and add to your weight pretty quick. Our packs were probably over 50 pounds each. Even with that amount of weight in gear, there was plenty I had to leave behind.
There was some apprehension that was arising out of an existing baseline of stress and emotional taxation from the previous weeks: those emotional stressors produce recurring thoughts which steadily eat away at your system. "How will the weather be up there? Did we pack enough warm clothes and bedding? Are we waterproofed? Did we pack enough? Is it still bear season or are they in hibernation? Can my body handle this?" I was already starting to feel negative effects like shortness of breath and body aches before we hit the trail.
The hike up itself was arduous: there was a 1500 foot elevation gain in a couple of miles, which puts you up and over a ridge where there is high winds. The trip will make you huff and puff on a day hike, but with a 50+ pound pack it takes a little more work. And then up and over the ridge, there was a long scramble over a large scree field, or a field of eroded, crushed rock which will slide as you traverse it, taking care to navigate the larger rocks, lest one tips and you trap your ankle and possibly break it, which spells trouble out there.
We made camp at the end of the first day in and the winds were kicking up, with dark clouds coming in with some expected rain and then possibly snow as the temperature dropped. There was a lot of moisture in the air and outer layers were getting damp. You don't want to break too much of a sweat hiking in the fall and winter, especially if outside temperatures are going to drop below freezing. Damp clothes and gear can really screw you up. My clothes were a little damp, so I had to change into the spares I had, and then the damp stuff had to be stowed.
For dinner we boiled up some instant rice and veggies. Instant rice is inflammatory. We also had some vodka in our tea; also inflammatory. All of the wear and tear during the day, the built up emotional stress, and the inflammatory food would all soon add up.
The trouble started later at night when the temperature started to drop.
The body is this wonderful little furnace, and as long as you have suitable insulation and everything is working inside you like it should, and you're fed and have energy to burn, your body maintains the temperature it needs to, and can even radiate that heat out into an insulated space like a sleeping bag. It is when the outside temperature starts dropping below freezing that the maintenance of body heat begins to feel like a struggle, with the cold encroaching wherever it can, probing for weaknesses, pressing against insulating bodies and sneaking in through cracks. This is where heavier insulation comes in handy, or even another source of heat such as a fire, and you're not supposed to make fires in Rainier unless there is an emergency.
My sleeping bag wasn't quite up to par, and the icy air started to nibble at my feet and head, and I started to feel it pressing against the sleeping bag. For the normal person, even this encroachment doesn't have to be a serious problem. Having cold feet can be uncomfortable for sleeping through the night, but as long as your core stays warm and your body is maintaining temperature, you're OK.
Unfortunately at that point I was no longer a normal person. The encroaching cold presented an additional source of stress that was added to an already stressed autonomic system. My body temperature started to oscillate, with alternating feelings of fever and chills. With autonomic dysregulation going into full swing, breathing became more difficult, my heart rate started to go up, and then my heart was pounding. I became confused and faint and dizzy, and then that complex of symptoms started to cause fear, which made everything worse.
I was afraid because I had episodes like this before in much more agreeable circumstances, such as in a heated room with all of the available trappings of civilization, as well as the escape route of the emergency room if it became necessary, and still such episodes were quite frightening. Circulatory issues like heart and breathing problems are instinctually quite alarming, whether they are immediately physically threatening or not, and an emergency room doctor will tell you to get in right away.
Now this was happening and I was miles out and up in the mountains. Even if I was able to wake my hiking companion and abandon the tent and unnecessary gear, it still meant hiking back through the scree field and then miles back through moderately difficult terrain in the pitch dark with a headlamp, and then into a car, and then 2 hours from there to an emergency room, all in a very fragile state, sensitive to any kind of stressor. In other words, I wasn't going anywhere.
Psychologically this put me in a dire state. Outside was a completely foreign wilderness which I hadn't been in before, and it was in the middle of the night. The wind had kicked up and the sides of the tent were swaying back and forth and at times buckling. We still weren't sure if there were still bear in the area. There were signs of old berry-filled scat in the vicinity, and I had buried my food stash in the bushes away from the tent. Without a bear-proof cannister or a tree to hang it in, it could have easily been raided. My body itself was in chaos and unrecognizable as a vessel.
So I thought, "OK either I get through the night, or this is it."
When there is no hope of help in the external realm, and you lack any substantial means to alter your external environment for the better, all you have is a turn inwards, within which may lie elements to work with, or that's the end of the story anyway. It helps to isolate each problem, bit by bit, starting with the highest priority and what can be immediately dealt with, and then with each successful measure, leveraging the growing stability to address each additional issue as it comes.
I was on the verge of panic, so first came addressing the fear. The nice thing about going to an emergency room previously for an episode like this was coming away with the knowledge that this was probably not anything immediately physically dangerous: they didn't find anything dangerously wrong the first time, such as physical heart or lung problems, and I survived the episode, so whatever was going on could probably be managed without professional medical help. This knowledge could be leveraged to rationalize away any immediate fear of death.
Still, fear and panic are also physiological responses. Your brain will keep looping on thoughts of doom if you don't get your body calm. My heart was still out of control and I was still having trouble breathing, and all this felt pretty bad. What I've found for this is that meditative breathwork actually works quite well for this sort of thing. The combination of the meditation and breathwork not only helps to control fear, but it serves the additional purposes of getting your heartrate down, and then normalizing your breathing and getting a more efficient mix of oxygen into your bloodstream.
There are various methods to make use of here, but one simple method I've found to be effective is to inhale as deeply as possible, counting to 5 while doing so, and then holding that breath for another 5 seconds, and then exhaling that breath as thoroughly as possible, emptying the lungs, counting another 5 seconds in turn, and then meditating on the whole of this process.
I also discovered by accident that as I rolled around, I would get different responses of circulation, and my heart would calm down in certain positions. I didn't really know why, but figured there were different things happening with circulation as I moved, so I turned my body, feeling out where it was reaching a better calm.
Eventually these high priority issues were addressed. I was no longer on the verge of panic, and my heart rate went down, and I was able to breathe comfortably enough. I was still cold, and then suddenly had to evacuate my bowels, which meant going out into the freezing cold. However my body temperature fluctuations had also calmed, and I was able to get into a shell.
Outside, the wind was howling and we were in the midst of a swiftly moving cloud layer, which could be made out in the dark as vapor swirling across the beam of the headlamp. The rain had stopped, but now there was a frost forming on the tent and on the ground. I made my way to a sheltered outcropping some distance from the tent, and then dug a cat-hole and did my business, feeling better after that.
As I returned to the tent, I began to realize that there were no berries I had seen in the area, and that even if there were still bear out of hibernation in the area, it would be hard for them to triangulate any sort of localized scent in this wind. My heartrate and breathing had already stabilized, but I was still cold and wet.
When I got back in the tent, I took stock of everything I had that was still dry, stowing everything that was wet, and then layered every possible part of dry clothing to get as much insulation as possible, and then crawled into my sleeping bag. My feet were still a bit cold, but I was able to sneak in a brief snooze every half hour or so, and regain my strength. At the first sight of light, I got out of the tent and wandered up and down the shelf we were camped on, waiting for the sun to hit. It was still freezing outside, but our campsite was east-facing, in favor of that early morning sun.
When the sun hit I sat there regrouping in the rays, and started feeling even better. That morning, I had felt deathly, but the crisis had passed, I had had a little sleep, and now I was thawing out. We put all of our wet clothes and gear out to dry, before having a light breakfast and some tea.
We were on the move the rest of the day, and I felt so bad, and so feared that next night, that I was on the verge of bailing out the entire time. We were pretty high up at that point, and it hovered around the 40's during the day, so I knew it would get freezing cold again at night.
Nevertheless, we pressed on, and I had several things going for me: the weather was good and I had managed to get my clothing and gear pretty dry. I sharply constrained my diet and cut out the alcohol. There was no sign of bear, and we were already well into our trip so there was not much left to anticipate and stress over. That evening, my Long Covid flareup subsided, and I had more articles of dry clothing available to layer up, keeping fairly comfortable that night, and able to sleep for longer blocks of time, and so I was able to finish the trip without bailing out.
So I want to return to the point I was initially trying to make at the beginning of the piece. Going into a wilderness served to heighten a wilderness that was growing in me. There is still a whole lot of ground to cover, and I have a lot of work to do elucidating a concept of wilderness that will make further sense of this talk. In time though, this will provide some useful base materials for further analyses, as well as some potentially useful practical applications related to them.
