When Traveling, Never Underestimate Mother Nature
Jon Stokes 02.24.15
There’s a good post up on Reddit by a woman who just got back from being snowed in at a remote cabin with few supplies for almost a week.
Last Friday my husband and I drove three hours to my family’s secluded cabin with our dogs. It was supposed to snow Sunday evening, but we planned to leave in the morning to avoid it, so we only had enough food and firewood to last two days. We had going in our favor that we brought our entire bag of dogfood, thankfully, as well as a newly refilled bottle of my husband’s epilepsy medication. Sometime Saturday night it started to snow, and by the time we woke up Sunday morning we were snowed in to the max. We tried to get out, but ended up getting the truck stuck.
It was at this point that we realized we hadn’t told anyone where we were…
So many mistakes, here. Even relatively novice outdoors and survival types can tick off the big ones, but that’s not why I post this. I post it because it’s a great reminder that you have to take Mother Nature seriously every time you go into the outdoors, even if you’re going some place familiar.
The last time I went camping in California, we were set up near the entry point for a popular trail (not my preference, but in CA you have to take what you can get, especially when everyone wants to drive in, it’s a summer weekend, and you haven’t reserved something months in advance). Anyway, I was all geared up, of course. I tend to go a little overboard because I’m a gear person. I’m sitting there in the camp in my Filson attire while families in street clothes and kids in flip flops, shorts, and outlandish rave-type outfits are stopping by to ask me directions.
I’m sure that all those people were just fine, even when the freezing rain set in later that afternoon, because that’s how such things are. 99% of the time things go more or less as planned. But in that 1% of the time, when Mother Nature catches you unprepared, she’s quite unforgiving of even the smallest mistakes. It’s in those moments when even a little beforehand attention to detail can drastically increase your odds of getting home in one piece.
