Monday, May 2, 2016

On your own

So a couple different things have to come my mind for this next blog but I think the one were going to talk about today is the skill of doing stuff on your own. In my observations of people my age and younger (25 and under). I’ve learned many things, some good aspects scattered mostly within things I don’t care for. This is one of those things and as with any bad habit that you never knew you had its hard to tell where it really came from. Now I know for many generations before now its been the manly thing to do stuff on your own. Ya know take it apart and put it back together, anything worth doing is worth doing alone and never under any circumstances ask for directions, ever. But while I wont say that this mind set is the greatest kind to have I will compliment the fact that this type of thinking produces one inalienable skill and that is self-reliance. You see self-reliance when you go into the hardware store and see that guy who just through some invisible map knows where everything he needs is to be found even down to the tiniest screw. Its being able to build a fire with flint and steel even though you have matches. It’s the things you do that other tools and people can help you do but that you choose to do because you have the ability to. Its pulling out a map book to find directions rather than just typing it into your phone. This is what has stuck out to me as something that is found less and less in people under the age of 30.
So I’ve shown you a problem and maybe those of you who know more about the inner workings of the mind know exactly what is the cause of this but I want to know how to fix it. What can I/we do to bring it back and revitalize our future generations? I use for an example of self-reliance my dad who developed through mere desire and determination the rare, always intricate and often artistic skill of woodworking. This along with many other different skilled trades has declined in proficient workers here over the past decade or so. Now your free to draw your own conclusions, this is America and your allowed to be wrong, but I feel that this lack of self-reliance may be at least one branch at the root of this decline. Even to think about something as small as canning, back in the day you can everything cause in the winter when you ran out of food you couldn’t just run to the store. Nowadays repurposing things is sort of a fad but once again back in the day everything had more than one purpose. What im trying to get at is as a generation we have had an excess of convenience which has led to us relying on our selves less and less. Our country was founded, explored and built by self-reliant men and women and I don’t think you need to much foresight to see that self-reliance will continue to be needed if as a country and as individuals if we plan on succeeding in the future.
Ok I got off on a tangent I apologize so now back to how being self-reliant is a skill backpackers and outdoorsmen & women should have. I meet more and more people who have trusted a GPS their whole exploring career and when asked to simply orient a map to north are unable to. Or their friends who know only one way to do something: finding north, building a fire, cooking a meal ect. A self reliant backpacker should be able to think outside the box when it comes to things like problem solving, buying gear and even new and improved ways of practicing LnT. Now I know when I say have skills in bushcraft, survival, hunting, foraging and what not the first thing that comes to many a mind is “oh hes talking about doomsday prepers that doesn’t apply to me and backpacking” but in actuality they really do. For those of you who have read about John Muir and don’t just quote him on occasion you’ll find that he along with many of the original outdoor enthusiasts who revitalized getting outdoors all possessed these very skills that we kind of scoff at today. Yet each of these and many others are skills found in a self-reliant outdoorsy individual.
So you’ve heard me rant and you’ve listened to me rave now let me make a request. Next time your faced with a challenge big or small, tackle it, wholeheartedly and to completion. And then the next time you have a great idea, tackle that, and make it happen rather than just letting it gather dust. Do more. Try more. Now when you do these you will also fail more but in the end even in failure you have taken one more step towards that true freedom, to be able to say to yourself “I choose to ask for help but I don’t need it”. I guess I should input here that I don’t at all think asking for help is a bad thing, I just think we do it to much. Challenge yourself, so that when you next face whatever challenge nature throws at you can say “I got this”
As always thanks for reading and feel free to leave comments or questions
        Also i'm doing a bit of a survey so i'd like to know traits ors skills that come to your mind when you think of a self-reliant person? throw as many as come to mind into the comments below! thanks!
Hope to see you on the trail
Seek the wild
Luke


 this was my office for writing this blog!

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