You know, a REAL alpha male -- a guy with practical skills and knowledge; a reliable, responsible, trustworthy protector and provider. Not some doofus that all the guys in the gym and all the sluts in the club look up to because they never had good father figures.
To that end, I started taking a variety of survival training,programs a few years ago; the last one was a SERE course where I spent the night sleeping under a fallen tree in the hail after being pepper sprayed and tasered and interrogated.
(I probably could have hired a dominatrix to give me the same experience more enjoyably; perhaps that's a project for another time.)
So anyway, I just finished what will probably be the swansong of my survival courses -- a seven-day survival hike in the mountains and canyons of Utah. (For once I will link to the company.) It was more of a hippie "primitive living" style thing, not the paramilitary themed stuff I did previously.
We hiked more than ten miles a day (on average) through spectacular scenery -- pine forests, sage brush fields, mountains and canyons -- and ate nothing but berries and plants for the first 30 hours. We drank river water, though we did treat it with Aqua Mira drops. We slept under improvised shelters made from rain ponchos and wool blankets and paracord, and started our own fires with bow drills.
(I probably could have hired a dominatrix to give me the same experience more enjoyably; perhaps that's a project for another time.)
So anyway, I just finished what will probably be the swansong of my survival courses -- a seven-day survival hike in the mountains and canyons of Utah. (For once I will link to the company.) It was more of a hippie "primitive living" style thing, not the paramilitary themed stuff I did previously.
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| I walked across this entire canyon. Seriously. |
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We hiked more than ten miles a day (on average) through spectacular scenery -- pine forests, sage brush fields, mountains and canyons -- and ate nothing but berries and plants for the first 30 hours. We drank river water, though we did treat it with Aqua Mira drops. We slept under improvised shelters made from rain ponchos and wool blankets and paracord, and started our own fires with bow drills.
It was an amazing experience -- albeit an expensive one -- and anybody who thinks that hippies are unathletic or helpless needs to check out these people -- they run up and down the mountains in sandals with the agility and stamina of billy goats.
And our highly competent, tireless, and self-sufficient "alpha" head instructor?
A 31 year old female.
Did it make me feel more "alpha?" Well, I suppose so -- thinking you can do something and knowing you can do something like that is not necessarily a profound difference, but it is a difference.
And on the last day during the graduation ceremony, the other students had to say which positive things we liked about each other -- and about me it was said, "X was always positive and enthusiastic about everything, and always seemed to be living in the moment and reminding everybody how beautiful everything around us was."
ME! Positive and enthusiastic!
What do you think about THAT?
But of course, all that living-in-the-moment stuff disappears pretty quickly once you get down from the mountain . . .
Tomorrow: heading off to Marmaris,Turkey to meet the refuses-to-be-ex-Girlfriend. The next memoir is getting a final polish and will be available in the next week or two.
2 comments:
Have you ever seen "Alone in the Wilderness", the self-filmed documentary about Dick Proenneke?
They run it on PBS quite often in the states, but I'm guessing that you may have missed it. It's a must see, in my opinion, for someone interested in 'alpha male' survivalism. You can likely get in via torrent or something.
Oh yeah I've seen it. That's amazing, he whittles together a chair it like a minute.
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