Anywhere?

Background: These are the gut thoughts after our first real time simulation of a multi-victim medical emergency. The first time - i.e. we didn't do all that hot. That combined with a reminder that 98% means hitting the ground. Which is a quote from a book by an extreme alpinist that reminds me about the will to survive. That internal drive to do everything within your power to draw one more breathe. To live loud and to go screaming with joy into the afterlife knowing that you did everything you could to get the most out of your time here and stuck around for as long as possible. I'm not there yet, but life goes on.


If I could be anywhere in the world right now I would be in the Darfur region of Sudan. I would be at a refuge camp where the government armed militia in the hills are trying to kill the refuges faster than the dysentery is doing it. I would be doing everything in my power to be trying to make those people's lives better.

And that's why I'm in Northern New York spending a ridiculous amount of time and money to get a piece of paper that says I'm a Wilderness First Responder. Because the bare bones truth is that the people in Darfur would be much better off right now if I simply took my weight in medical supplies and put them on the plane instead of myself. I don't have the skills or expertise to be worth the food and water I would be consuming on site. So I'm here. Trying to improve my mind and body so I might be of more help to whatever community in the Philippines I end up in. Another step along the road.

Which brings me to another thought. I don't believe in altruism. I'm an adrenaline junkie. For the same reason I enjoy lead climbing, or buildering, and would love to be living in a tent in Patagonia right now; (which for the curious, it is in fact, more than a clothing brand) I want to be in the thick of the worst humanitarian hot spots in the world. Its where I truly feel alive. The difference between the two is that I can sleep better at the end of the day working for the Appalachia Service Project (www.asphome.org) and I can rocked out of bed in the morning knowing that I'm making a difference in someone else's life as well as my own. At the end of the decade I want to know that I've done more than just improve myself and my own life. I want to have more than just a scrap book or cool places I've been or a list of summits I've made... but that would be nice too.

~george