If you’re going to be dumb, you’ve got to be tough, or so the old saying goes. Sometimes, though, tough just isn’t enough. Sometimes, it’s not even a good idea at all.
One morning some springs ago, a friend and I were sitting in a clump of squatty cedar bushes, gritting our teeth against the cold drizzle that was testing our endurance and pride. It was late spring and we were turkey hunting in northwestern Nebraska.
Our spring season in Mississippi was winding down, summer was trying to climb in, it was already plenty hot at home and had been for weeks. That’s my excuse for the fact that, when I packed for my turkey hunt on the Great Plains, I did not do a good job of checking the weather at my destination. Neither did my friend.
To Nebraska I brought hot weather camo, which did include long sleeved shirts, thankfully. Besides a turkey vest I had hot weather pants, t-shirts and a cap. That was what I had.
I did have a camo rain suit on the trip with me, but I had left camp without it the morning in question.
We left camp in the windless dark under a cloudless sky. The temperature at 4 a.m. was probably 58 degrees. Stars from the Milky Way twinkled unimpeded through the black, wee hours of a new day. We were dozens of miles from our secondary gear by the time rain clouds came scudding in. They rained too hard to let us stay dry but not hard enough to drive us from the field. The temperature dropped a little, but a little was plenty and enough.
About the time it started sprinkling, we set up to intercept a turkey that proved slow in coming, as they usually tend to be when you’re most uncomfortable. The temperature had fallen to 43 degrees, every movement caused water to sprinkle from the cedars onto one or both of us. Somewhere out of sight the turkey in question gobbled. Maybe he was a little closer than he had been 20 minutes before, or maybe he wasn’t. We yelped at him a few times and he gave us a courtesy gobble or two but not much else, and time began to stretch out and grow distorted.
To anyone who has never gotten too cold unexpectedly, this may sound ridiculous and soft, like a story about a time I got a splinter or a hangnail. Anyone who’s been through the simple, self-imposed stupidity of being surprised by the cold, though, knows it’s a seriousness that stands up for itself. Just because you won’t complain about it doesn’t mean you won’t die of it.
Anyone who’s spent much time outdoors has developed their own technique for toughing out a mildly-unpleasant situation. I enjoy reading, but it diverts my eyes from what I need them to do. Audiobooks via earphones do the same for my ears. I need to be able to watch and hear as well as I possibly can while I’m waiting, so my solution has long been to intentionally send my conscious mind somewhere else for the duration. It lets me remain alert in the present while focusing on anything other than how uncomfortable I might be.
My memory can usually be made available for close study, like a map unfolded on a dining room table or unrolled on the hood of a truck. I focus intensely on one element of my memory until it fills the scope of my imagination, then my connection to the conscious present slips away and I can comfortably entertain myself with a memory just as I would a story from a book.
It can be like re-reading a familiar tale and enjoying the best parts again. It gives me a sense of comfort and distraction that lets time pass without preempting my hearing or sight.
Applying the technique, I’ve found, is a lot like learning how to see the 3D image in those optical illusion posters that were so popular for a while. Once you’ve figured out how to see one, you can find your way back to how to see another.
While it was 43 and drizzling on us in Nebraska that spring morning, I pointed my memory at a specific August afternoon spent with the Old Men in a boat on Grenada Lake. I remembered the sensation of sweat dripping from the tip of my nose — the unique, little tickle that makes, and that it made. I remembered the way the sunburning skin on my face around my left eye pulled tight. I remembered the scent of live catalpa worms in the screened box where they waited, the sound of their combined munchings on the fluff of fresh leaves they occupied, the texture of the taut trotline pulsing and vibrating in hand, the sight of drops beading up on the line where they’d grow, then sparkle, before falling back into a lake that was silty and brown.
On the morning in question, though, I found I could not clear the mechanism this way and ride it out. I could recall each memory, but I could not step through the glass to the other side and rest at ease. Regardless of thought, I was stuck in the uncomfortable present for every second of the trial. I tried to amuse and distract myself by ticking off the warning signs of hypothermia. Best I could tell, I seemed to have them all.
Eventually the turkey in question worked his way past us just out of shooting range, leaving both our setup and our suffering for naught. That meant there was no point to toughing out our present situation any longer.
The fact our setup hadn’t impressed him any more than it did probably helped us come through the morning only slightly scathed. Much more scathing might have been more than we could take. If he had hung up at 80 yards and spent a couple hours thinking it over, it could have been over in more ways than one.
I don’t know how close to doom our peril actually was, but I do know, when we got there, full blast from the truck’s heater felt mighty good.
Kevin Tate is a freelance writer. Email [email protected]
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