The second reason, after dehydration, that all other
potential hazards turn into tragedy is PANIC! When you feel panic creeping in just:
- Sit down.
- Drink some water.
- Eat a snack.
- Then go through your pack and take inventory.
These steps are critical. Why?
- Stress will sap your energy and dehydrate you making matters worse.
- Many folks forget that they have (or don't think to use) the items in their pack to get out of
a jam.
- All of the TIME this takes
is also critical. Your brain releases "fight or flight" chemicals (freak-out juice) during panic. Your
bloodstream needs time to flush out your system and brain in order to allow the "logic processing" parts of
your brain to start functioning again. You will simply avoid fatal mistakes by thinking clearly and logically.
This is why I feel
it is a good idea to learn Wilderness First Aid and other Wilderness Skills. Learn these to the point that skills
are embedded in you so deep that they become a "knee jerk reaction" (some call this muscle memory). With skills
embedded inside you, those fight or flight chemicals will release your training instead of freak-out juice (empty, primal,
panic).
Until
you get that far, there is no excuse not to keep various written instructions for different emergencies in your first aid
kit. As they told us in the military training, "You don't have to know everything, but you must
know how to find the information quickly".
