Fear and expeditions

Fear can strike anytime.

In a way it is very easy to deal with.

Stick your face boldly into the miasmas that are the face of fear and it will turn tail like a frightened thing itself and scurry away whining.

But the hard part is getting to the point where you can be decisive, so you can decide to boldly front up your problems. This is because the first thing fear robs us of, is the power of swift decision making.

Running away, hiding under the bed clothes, changing the subject may be obvious ways of avoiding the problem that is causing fear. But more insidious ways of running away include ‘Solutions’- complicated structures and ideas that serve to pin you down, unable to face your real problem. These solutions thrive on weak decision making. But simply 'making a decision' is not enough. You need to have in place a routine for dealing with fear. And the best routine is routine itself.

On an expedition you expect to be frightened some of the time, and so you are prepared for it. The first place it is likely to strike is in the weeks and days before setting off, possibly into the unknown. The night before ‘funk’ was often dealt with by sailors and other professional expeditioners by getting blind drunk and then waking up just as the boat slipped its moorings, ready to face the dangers and rewards of an expedition. This is one way of a routine taking care of things...

Sometimes you tell yourself that the fear you feel is a real intuition of some disaster that will happen on the trip. But intuitions of a vague nature like this are a cloak for your survival instinct- which is telling you ‘take care’. Nothing is wrong with that. If you get a severe intuition that you shouldn’t fly on a certain plane, take a later flight. But don’t stop flying- that is giving in to fear.

The nature of an expedition is that you carry everything you need with you, or arrange for supply dumps along the way, or for resupply. You have all the money you need, all the food you need, all the gear you need. A lot of planning and preparation have gone in to this. No expedition that succeeds wings it in these matters. In life, when we start a new project we often try and wing it. Most often we say- ‘I’ll see how it goes and then decided whether to keep on’. This is almost always doomed to failure. There are bound to be points when the fear mounts and you ask yourself ‘what the hell I am doing here?’ It is precisely at that point that all the routines, mantras, uniforms and rituals of the expedition kick in to get you moving. As long as you are moving you are winning, the expedition is moving to success. So whenever you plan a project make sure all your supplies- mental and physical- are set aside for however long the project will take. 

Actually, on an expedition, in the long run, probably worse than bald and obvious fear, is the fear that comes on the wings of discomfort. You have come to expect obvious fear and it only pops up from time to time- maybe crossing tricky ground or facing large wild animals. And you discover that the wilderness, most of the time is a neutral place- it is not there to harm you or help you- it is there for you to use to your advantage if you can. But if you are cold and tired and hungry very very quickly the whole raison d’etre of the expedition can melt away. Little things can suddenly seem dangerous. When you are shaking with cold its easy to imagine tumbling off a cliff to your death. In wartime it has been observed that privation and discomfort cause more mutinies than dangerous battle situations. An army marches on its stomach for very good reason. So for this reason you need to be able to slyly take pleasure in very small things. If everything is wet, revel in the one dry item you have managed to save. Look forward to that first cup of tea when you stop walking. Take pleasure in getting a good fire going. If things are getting so uncomfortable that forward progress is threatened, take time out to remedy the situation. Don’t fight on when your morale is dangerously low. Take one or two days rest. Rebuild your resources. Never be in so much of a hurry not to take a tactical break from time to time. Hurry is the single biggest cause of failure in expeditions. Hurrying causes blisters, injuries, getting lost, losing your sense of humour, losing gear. It is a sign of a poorly thought through expedition. You should have worked out your daily mileage and should be able to do it without hurrying. Knowing how many miles you have to do, and doing them, is the biggest single comforter you have- and the best guard against fear.