Issue link: http://bluemagazine.uberflip.com/i/25234
A brief orientation for our mildly nervous pack of urbanites is our first sighting of the guides. All are physically fit, though not in a gym sort of way, wearing a variety of sarongs, pajama tops and handmade deerskin Pocahontas bottoms, stitched vests, skin luggage and Aztec-pattern backpacks. They are rootless, primitive artisans, outdoor-renaissance people, nature handymen and women using minimal gear. If I'd met the lead guide Breck in Manhattan, I'd have taken him for a granola store counterman denying his privileged, suburban Connecticut rearing. But he is Abo man-one for all seasons-eating only meat he kills personally, then respectfully using every part of the animal to make bone tools, oil, clothing, fishhooks and ornaments. Breck makes even hippie minimalists look like capitalist gluttons. He lives in a fold-up yurt when he's not teaching and seems happier than any penthouse-dweller I've ever met. The guides urge us to "repack" using only "appropriate technology." In other words, they rummage through our approved, scant belongings and eliminate forbidden fruits like vitamins and sunglasses. "We need to see your eyes," they say. Then it's off into southwestern grandeur and temperature swings from 100 degrees (day) to 40 degrees (night). WHAT A DIFFERENCE A WALK MAKES Hard learning follows hard lessons-many were magnified in the wake of The Survivor television series was merely enduring annoying office politics acted out in bathing suits. An epoch away, the Boulder (Utah) Outdoor Survival School (BOSS) teaches primitive wilderness living skills and is a total detox from urban stress, billboard advertising enemas, cultural originality genocide, and email habitude. Out here we have elected instead to be forced into pursuits as diverse as deep mediation and starvation- which, I learn, go hand in hand. Without a TV camera. BOSS hasn't changed their field course formula much since the company's inception in 1968. The Anasazi Indians migrated out of the Utah Canyonlands 1,000 years ago; BOSS temporarily re-peoples the same canyons with TV-reared beings unintentionally biting off more outdoor challenge than they can chew. The introductory course, which I am taking, starts the group with three days in Impact phase traveling without food or water. The next phase, Group Expedition, is about group learning and practicing of survival skills. Then the three-day Solo quest phase is followed by the finale, Team Expedition phase, where you spending two days and nights in a smaller group traveling without a guide. BOSS' field courses roam near and within Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. The Escalante zone, like all desert, is created by channels worn by water flowing from all sides to a center nearer to the vitals of the globe-the dynamic way the earth expresses itself here. Signed into monument status by Bill Clinton, it's America's newest and second largest monument, on deck to become a national park. Nearby drug rehabilitation programs model part of the BOSS survival school approach. There have been rehab patients who, seeking natural psychoactive euphoria, consumed deadly desert vegetation. Just now, I think that the water we're suckling from a naturally-created pothole-also home to innumerable darting tadpoles-may render some kind of buzz. Survival courses attract a gamut of students ranging from millionaires to destitute students-all looking to test their limits and repurpose priorities: shelter, water, fire, and food. Our group is eight email-savvy guys, aged 19-41 (including an LA cop, an Iowa collegian, an erstwhile football player, and two East Coast suits who were recent business school grad types). Four of us will be testing the theory that the human body's warranty expires around 35 years of age. Women typically compose 30 percent of the student body, and the dropout rate for both men and women is consistent, both around 10 percent. Half of the guides are women- but far from the type you'd find codependent with Gucci. three days of extreme trekking without cuisine. We set off at dusk, wearing only waist packs minus water bottles, our belts dangling with tied-off garments and one sparkly-blue enamel cup each. Crossing the high desert replete with pinon pines, then slipping into a meandering intermittent riverbed wash, the pace quickens. It's dark. We are drinking only the water we find, treated with drops of aerobic oxygen, a cousin of chloride oxide. Albeit taxing, it's easier to fast with coaches holding you to the mission than it would be slouching before a telly, hand tucked in the trousers. Lesson: Sleeping outside in light clothing without blanket or poncho on cold sand sucks, even in a fetal clutch with limbs tucked inside shirt. The mercury just above freezing, is. We have not yet been tutored on the technical aspects of survival, so teeth chatter. In the middle of the night and without warning, Breck points to a hillside and tells us, "Go sleep!" Shiver dreams wake to shiver reality. My night prayers include reciting the Doors' lyrics, "Waiting for the sun." I wake up by accidentally rolling into a turgid cactus, and bite the thorns out of my foot- already becoming an animal. The group assembles for a solemn morning meeting. The executives sporting the top-of-the-line name brand technical outerwear didn't sleep at all; my hooded "Princess Cruise" windbreaker, though failing to reaffirm my manliness, fared better. Since most body heat escapes into cold ground, a brief after-the- fact lecture on the importance of making a puffy brush/mulch mattress- human bird's nest-was useless. Even the few who previously knew this had dug futilely into thorny nests, given up and collapsed from exhaustion. Breck explains how at night cold air settles downhill like water. So when hunting shelter seek mid-level ground, that is protected from the wind common on lower and higher ground. That, and "spooning" with someone combines and redoubles body heat- none of the guys looked at each other. We set out for more Olympic-walking through myriad terrain changes, the elevation rising and falling from 5,000 to 10,000 feet and back again. We're being pushed to simulate a survival situation. Jet-lagged and originating from cement sea-level, I'm punchy with hungry exhaustion and wondering if they mean impact...dismissed-from-plane without chute? You can quit, but there's no refund. You can die, but there's that death waiver you signed. En route seminars include an introduction to animal track identification (other specialized BOSS courses focus on tracking and trapping animals). Rear bear tracks look amazingly human; lizards leave foot and tail prints; and eating river-birch trees leaves tastes amazingly like eating tree