Wilderness Survival

WILDERNESS SURVIVAL It All Hinges on Your State of Mind

"Mile after mile the journey stretches through this land of 'silence, solitude, and sunshine,' with little to distract the eye from the awful surrounding dreariness and desolation except bleaching skeletons. . . ."

Report of the Boundary Commission upon the Survey and Remarking of the Boundary between the United States and Mexico west of the Rio Grande Pioneered by Father Kino in the late 1600s, Arizona's Camino del Diablo claimed the lives of over 200 argonauts enroute to the California goldfields in the 1850s. Like the pioneers who headed west along the Gila, Sante Fe, and Oregon trails, those that traveled the "Devil's Highway" were a hardy lot. But sheer hardiness, or courage, didn't always compensate for poor planning or the objective hazards of trekking along that notorious desert track. In those days you learned about survival firsthand, often the hard way. All the dreamy eyed pilgrim had was a secondhand or thirdhand route description, a few words of encouragement, and his worldly possessions in tow. And he either survived his initial hardships or became another bleached skeleton for the turkey vultures to roost on.

Today there are two ways to learn about survival, the old way, or the "easier" way. As the word alludes, survival is not fun, nor is it particularly easy; though some survival texts now tell us how to chuckle our way through all but the most dire survival situations, if we use their elaborate techniques. But let's be realistic. When was the last time any of us caught a three-course brunch in a snare, trap, or deadfall? How many of us could start a fire with a crude bow drill? And when was the last time you found any potable water in someplace as dry as the lower Sonoran desert in midsummer?

Most of us won't ever have to find out. But as the headlines every year point out, a growing number of people are being thrust back into primitive survival situations whether the cause is a plane crash, flat tire, or poor planning.

And unless you've actually practiced the survival techniques it took primitive man years to master, the odds are against you making them work when you need them most.

One such person who learned about survival firsthand, now makes it easier for others to learn. Forty-three-year-old Dave Ganci is one of the recognized experts in the field. He instructs weeklong survival courses for the Navy and Army Special Warfare groups and teaches outdoor survival and outdoor living skills for the Department of Leisure Studies at Arizona State University.

Ganci is also the author of two books, Hiking the Desert and a Sierra Club Totebook entitled Hiking Trails in the Southwest. Ganci's "Desert" book offers some straightforward advice for survival in arid lands:

Arizona is a land of diverse topography and climate extremes. So what applies to desert survival doesn't always hold true for mountain travel. The key to surviving any situation, be it alpine tundra or austere desert, is your state of mind. The best way to achieve the proper state of mind is to realize you have to make a sudden psychological transition from that of modern man with all his comforts to that of a caveman enduring a Stone Age existence. Once you do that, your inherent will to live and a little common sense will just about take care of the rest.