On getting old

I think I can now relate to this poem I have read all my life, especially the sixth stanza:

"You are old, Father William," the young man said,
"And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head -
Do you think, at your age, it is right?"

"In my youth," Father William replied to his son,
"I feared it might injure the brain;
But now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
Why, I do it again and again."

"You are old," said the youth, "As I mentioned before,
And have grown most uncommonly fat;
Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door -
Pray, what is the reason of that?"

"In my youth," said the sage, as he shook his grey locks,
"I kept all my limbs very supple
By the use of this ointment - one shilling the box -
Allow me to sell you a couple?"

"You are old," said the youth, "And your jaws are too weak
For anything tougher than suet;
Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak
Pray, how did you manage to do it?"

"In my youth," said his father, "I took to the law,
And argued each case with my wife;
And the muscular strength which it gave to my jaw,
Has lasted the rest of my life."

"You are old," said the youth, "one would hardly suppose
That your eye was as steady as ever;
Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose -
What has made you so awfully clever?"

"I have answered three questions, and that is enough,"
Said his father; "don't give yourself airs!
Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
Be off, or I'll kick you down stairs!"

by Lewis Carroll

The subject of signs

Now that I am on the subject of signs, I thought I should complement the Arizona State Department of Transportation for dispelling one of my great fears in life. All around the state you see signs that say "ICE MAY BE PRESENT IN COLD WEATHER." It was always a secret fear of mine that driving through the blazing heat of summer in Arizona, I just might hit a patch of ice and fly off the road. Now courtesy of the AZDOT I no longer have to worry.

Dust storms in Arizona can cause serious accidents on the highways. Admittedly, this is a problem and one that all drivers should be aware of. However, there are signs that say "REDUCE SPEED IN TIMES OF LOW VISIBILITY." (There are a few variations). Now, if there is reduced visibility, how am supposed to see the sign? I guess its just supposed to be a reminder, like all those signs that say "DO NOT CROSS DOUBLE LINE." They just make it hard to turn left. Not to mention all of the signs that say, "DO NOT PASS." I guess I break that one every time I pass one of the signs.

Use no forks

I was driving down the road and, as usual, reading all the signs. There was a truck in front of me with a large box. Printed on the box were the words, "USE NO FORKS." Now, I have been living for quite a while, and I am pretty much up on the news and such, but I have no idea why there is now a movement in America to ban the use of forks. As a former, and sometimes present, Boy Scout, I have gotten along well with just a knife. However, it is a little hard to eat things like jello, pudding and cold cereal with a knife. I assumed that spoons were invented for that purpose, and although I could probably make due with my fingers, a spoon and knife, forks have seemed to be convenient on occasion. Come to think of it, I really can't think of anything I couldn't eat with my fingers, a spoon and a knife. Maybe they are on to something?

The Death March

About twenty five years ago we had one of those memorable hikes that has long since passed into legend and has been referred to as the Death March. First of all, and right out of the chute, no one died. This was a Stake Camporee. The organizers, who will remain anonymous to protect the guilty, decided that all of the eight or so Scout Troops should have a real hiking experience. Since the hike was planned for November, they decided to hike to Charlebois Spring, probably named for a cattleman named Lou Charlebois who was the President of the Arizona Cattlemen's Association, deep in the Superstition Wilderness area, just east of Apache Junction, Arizona.

http://archimede.mat.ulaval.ca/pages/morin/charlebois.web/RR01/RR01_003.HTM

If you want more information, do a search on Charlebois Spring and you will find hundreds of references. Others claim that the Spring was named after Joseph Fernando Charlebois.

See http://genforum.genealogy.com/charlebois/messages/83.html

But as my son Jared would say, I digress. Now, depending on the reference it is anywhere from 6 to 8 from any access road. It just so happened that very few of these potential Scout hikers had actually walked that far in their lifetimes, especially not in Superstition Mountains. It also happened, as is possible at any time in the desert, that the temperature during the day was about 95 degrees. Unfortunately, they set the time for departure about 4:00 in the afternoon, guaranteeing that most of the participants would have to hike in the dark. (This is the tie-in to my previous post). If you do go looking for pictures of Charlebois Spring, you will note that most of the people in the pictures are wearing coats. This is not because they are crazy, it is because no one, in their right mind, would go hiking out into the middle of the Superstitions if the temperature is not down in the low 70s or 60s, with night time temperatures in the 40s or below.

At this time, my sons were not old enough to be in Scouting, and I had little contact with the Scouting program. (Of course this changed dramatically and I have spent the last twenty years or so in Scouting). We left later than the rest of the Scouts and their leaders. I remember that there were three or four of us hiking in together. I went along, essentially, for the ride.

We hiked in from the west end at the First Water Trailhead following the Peralta Trail. Keeping to the right (south) we got to the junction with the Boulder Canyon trail (if you follow this trail you go past Weaver's Needle and then to the northwest side of the Fremont Saddle). At this point the trail follows a wash for a ways and it is difficult to tell where the trail splits off so, of course, we missed the Peralta Trail. I figured out that we weren't on the right trail after a few minutes. We circled back in a large circle until I found the trail part way up a hill. Now, to understand this story, you have to realize that circling back to find a trail in the Superstitions isn't not very straight forward. You can never tell if you are going to run into a canyon or a cliff or something and you have to avoid cactus and catclaw.

It was starting to get dark when we were moving down the Peralta and soon it got really dark. I didn't have much of a light and I don't use a flashlight unless it is absolutely necessary, so I just kept moving. When we got to the main group, it was about 8:30 or so and the scene looked like that part of Gone with the Wind where all the wounded soldiers are laying all over the ground. It was pretty grim. A lot of people were injured and had blisters or back problems or whatever. They were spread along the trail for a couple of hundred yards, since there really isn't a clearing or anything to camp in large enough for Scout Troops. Some of the Troops never made it to the gathering area and just camped along the trail.

I went to sleep and in the morning it was even worse. The area of the Spring is pretty, especially with 100 or so Scouts running around. I worked on filling my water bottles with my filter pump. There was plenty of water. Those in charge decided that they had made a mistake and told everyone to just leave. They had a bunch of activities planned but all of them seemed irrelevant given the condition of the leaders and Scouts. We started hiking out the Peralta towards the Peralta Trailhead. We were supposed to have people come and pick us up about 4:00 in the afternoon. This was pre-cell phone and so we had no way to coordinate the pickup time with the rides who were coming. I walked out by Bluff Spring and still had most of my water. Bad decision, I should have filled up there. Making the climb over the ridge by Miner's Needle, the Scouts and leaders started to run out of water. I found some to filter, but my filter clogged up. I have given away most of my water and so I decided I better get out so I could be of some help to the rest on the trail. I was like the second or third person out, but there is no water at the Peralta Trailhead so I begged water off of people leaving in their cars. Finally, someone gave me a two gallon jug full, so I drank the whole thing and started back up the trail with one other leader. We found people all along the trail so we passed everyone to find out who was in the back of the group. We found a couple of leaders in really bad shape, almost passing out from the heat and dehydration. We gave them some water, took their packs and made them keep moving. I literally had to push my guy down the trail. We finally all got out.

When I got home, I found out I had lost six pounds of water in one day. Some of the Troops didn't get back until late that Saturday night after being lost all day. It was interesting.

Things that go blink in the night

Thinking about walking around in the dark reminded me of other dark related incidents in my, now dim, past. Our Scout troop would camp at various locations around the state, most of which, at the time, were moderately inaccessible. We camped for almost a week in a campground back into the canyon above where West Clear Creek now crosses Highway 260, which at the time was mostly a dirt road.

One night on this West Clear Creek camp, we were out running around in the dark making noise and probably playing capture the flag, when we saw a light a short distance away. Suddenly, we all stopped and stared at this rather unusual event. We ran towards the light to see if we could find the source and soon discovered that it was in a large bush. We shined our flashlights into the bush and the light disappeared. After a rather long discussion, we chocked the whole thing up to some hitherto unexplained natural phenomena, when the light appeared again a little ways off. At this point we had to decide whether to start being afraid or what. But the light disappeared and we finally all went to bed in our sleeping bags.

Many years later, for a short time, I lived along the Ohio River in Kentucky. This was my first introduction, as an adult, to the middle part of the United States. One of the things I saw for the first time were fireflies. It immediately occured to me that what had so mystified a bunch of Scouts from Arizona was nothing more than a lone firefly. I now know that fireflies are very uncommon, but not unknown, in Arizona. But it doesn't take that much to freak out a bunch of Scouts in the middle of the night.

Hiking in the dark

Sometimes I end up walking, misjudging the distance, and the hike turns into a night hike without planning for one. Occasionally we have planned to walk in the dark. When I was young, living in a small town, the electricity would go off regularly. Sometimes we would be sitting in the movie theater when the lights went out and the movie came to a grinding halt. We would all sit there and clap and yell, but eventually the novelty would wear off and we would file out and walk home. I had to walk up a long hill and it is amazing how dark it is outside with little or no ambient light. The only way I could make sure I didn't fall in a ditch, was to walk with one foot on the pavement and one foot off on the side of the road. It was so dark I really couldn't see my feet.

Maybe it was the darkness of the Colorado Plateau that made me unafraid of the dark and let me know that if you keep walking you will eventually get home or fall into or bump into something. It didn't really matter what happened. One of the more memorable dark night episodes occurred at the Dugway Proving Ground in the salt desert of Utah. At the time, I was being trained as an Army Ranger and I guess they thought it might be a good idea for us to wander around in the dark for a while, just in case we ever had to fight in the dark or anything. So they loaded us all up and trucked us out to the salt desert. It is dark out there at night and I would assume that they chose a night when the moon was supposed to come up pretty late. We were put in teams of two or three and given a compass bearing and a distance. We were supposed to find the next compass bearing and distance at the destination.

We took off in the direction we were supposed to go, walking out across the almost flat and very empty desert. When we had gone the distance, we found the next set of directions, but there was one small problem, back in those pre-digital days, it was too dark to see the directions, or see our compass or even tell what time it was. Every team had a different goal so we weren't all standing around in a group, but we could hear for miles and everybody was having a similar experience. We were on a tiny little hill, mostly just a rise in the ground, and couldn't see a thing. We could barely make out our hands in front of our faces. Looking to the East, I could see a glow on the horizon. I figured if we waited long enough, they would get tired of waiting for us or moon would come up and we would be able to read everything. It is quite interesting standing in the middle of an almost flat desert waiting for the moon to rise. It is amazing how slow the earth turns.

You can probably guess that the moon came up, or I probably wouldn't be telling this story. I can't remember what happened exactly, but I think the organizers got tired of waiting for everyone about 1:00 or 2:00 am and turned on a light and we all walked towards the light, got in our trucks and road back to the base. This must have been some sort-of standard Army experience because from time to time over the years I was in the Army, they would haul us out into the (fill in the blank) and let us try to find our way to (fill in another blank). The novelty of these experiences didn't last long, because before I was in the Army, I had already spent a considerable amount of time wandering around in the desert in the middle of the night. One time, we even swam across Saguaro Lake in the middle of the night. This is not an endorsement for doing things that aren't too bright, in the middle of the night in the desert, but it does cause me to think.

Usually, I start to think about these experiences when I read about someone who wanders away from a camp and gets lost. I could never figure this out. If it were daytime, you can see for miles in the desert and it would be hard to walk far enough so that you couldn't see where you started. Even in the night, there are few clouds and you can almost always see some kind of star which instantly tells you the direction. Even if you can only see a few stars, if you wait a while you can see them move and tell the major cardinal directions. Anyway, the wind always blows from the same direction in the Arizona and Utah at the same time of the year, so even if you can't see anything, if you can feel the wind you know what the directions are. If directions are important that is. It seems like from the time I was young, I had a map of Arizona and Utah in my head and I always knew exactly (or pretty close anyway) where I was.

One time I got disoriented in the middle of the night at Camp Geronimo, near Pine, Arizona. I was walking back to my camp and thought to take a short cut over a hill. When I got over the hill, I didn't know if I had come out above or below my campsite. I walked into another campsite and asked them the number of their site, which, by the way, none of them knew, and finally got an answer and immediately turned and walked to my own campsite.

OK, back to being lost. When I was in the Army in Kentucky and Washington state, I finally realized that with all those trees and bushes, if you got disoriented, it could take a while to find some way to see the sky or anything else for that matter. At least, I could now sympathize with some of the people that got lost.

One of my memorable night hikes was into the Superstition Mountains with a full moon. It was bright enough that we didn't need flashlights and I mostly remember walking through the huge cholla forests, it was like being on another planet. It is interesting but I can remember almost every foot of every trail I have ever hiked. (What a burden!!)

Relative Risk v. Perceived Risk

I am still thinking about the idea of relative v. perceived risk. Many outdoor activities are viewed as risky. For example, downhill skiing appears to have a higher risk factor than walking in a city park. However, depending on the time of day and the location of the park, the walk in the park might be much more of a risk that skiing. There are some activities which, by their nature, are high risk activities. For example, free climbing without protection, is more hazardes than with protection. My issue with the Scouting Magazine article for October, 2008 "Don't get sick on the trail" is the use of an unexplained statistic to increase the reader's perceived risk of an otherwise safe activity. It seems to me that ultimately, the real measure of any activity's risk is the mortality rate per number of participants. The use of mortality rates eliminates the issue that in a rather benign activity, like hiking, the injuries are likely to be minor, whereas a crash in bobsled could be a lot more serious.

Authors Richard J Zeckhauser and W. Kip Viscusi give the following observation:

"Society's system for managing risks to life and limb is deeply flawed. We overreact to some risks and virtually ignor others. Often too much wight is placed on risks of low probability but high salience (such as those posed by trace carcinogens or terrorist action); risks of commission rather than omission; and risks, scuh as those associated with frontier technologies, whose magnitue is difficult to estimate. Too little effort is spent ameliorating voluntary risks, such as those involving automobiles and diet. When the bearers of risk do not share in the costs of reduction, moreover, extravagance is likely. " See Simon, Julian Lincoln. The State of Humanity. Oxford, UK: Blackwell in association with the Cato Institute, 1995.

It is interesting to note the following Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Mortality Data (See http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/about/otheract/injury/injury_mortality.htm ):

"In 2002, the 10 leading causes of death were (in rank order) Diseases of heart; Malignant neoplasms; Cerebrovascular diseases; Chronic lower respiratory diseases; Accidents (unintentional injuries); Diabetes mellitus; Influenza and pneumonia; Alzheimer’s disease; Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome and nephrosis; and Septicemia and accounted for about 79 percent of all deaths occurring in the United States."

The CDCP indicates that in 2002, accidents comprised only 4.4% of all deaths in the U.S. However, the death rate for males between the ages of the 10 and 40 is as high as 50% from accidents. Essentially, what that means is that young men are not likely to die of anything else.

Perhaps, it would be a good idea to weigh the benefits of walking and hiking as compared to the risks of heart disease. When obesity is a national epidemic, it not appropriate to give overemphasis to the risks involved in walking around in the sunshine.