Within the first minute on the trail we were warned about ticks by an owner and his dog, but we didn’t give it too much thought as we were not running around in the tall grass chasing a stick. As we headed down the path toward the lake we found it harder to keep to the path. The recent rainfall and inactivity on the trail made for some confusing moments early on, but my phone provided me with the satellite imagery that showed us the error of our ways.

Quickly it became obvious that the recent and desperately needed rainfall would become somewhat of an issue for us on this day as the soil had become over saturated and could not absorb all of the water. Puddles and and impromptu lakes had formed where ones were not intended, and instead of firmly packed soil underfoot we had bogs of mud to deal with.

The first couple of miles had us coming to the realization that the nice day of hiking that we had planned would not happen and taking its place would be exhaustion and a test of endurance.

We brought sandwiches and snacks to eat while on the trail, a first for us, and took a couple on 15 minutes breaks to eat and stretch. Our midpoint, Collin Park, turned out to be a mile further than we had anticipated. Mile markers, although nice to have, seem to get us confused as they counted to totals that didn’t equal what our GPS said, or what we experienced by actually looking at each marker. All in all we were supposed to hike 9 miles, but with these issues the total took us a little beyond 10 miles.

Huffing and puffing as we dragged ourselves up the final muddy hill it dawned on me how much greater the feeling of accomplishment was, knowing that we had hiked longer and in more difficult conditions than ever before. Knowing that neither the length nor the intensity could keep us down was an awesome feeling.

10 miles may not sound too impressive to some people, but to me it was a great achievement. Just two years ago I tipped the scales at 320 pounds, and today weighing 60 pounds less I was able to do something that then I would have considered impossible. In fact the first hike that I did (about 4 moths ago) came in at just under 2 miles long and I was more physically drained and took longer to recover for that one than I did for this 10 mile mud-bath.

Some of my favorite memories of growing up were spent around fire, and some of the worst decisions that I’ve made were related to fire. It is a powerful tool that used correctly can save your life or used irresponsibly can take lives.

I am no stranger to bonfires or campfires, or even to building and maintaining a fire. But in my experiences the tools for making fire were always at hand and easy to use. We always had plenty of matches to start a flame, plenty of old funny pages to help as kindling, and bundles of store bought hard woods to burn hot and long.

This time it was different! I had some matches (some cheap ones stored in a waterproof container that I bought at Walmart). And I brought a cotton balls covered in Vaseline to help get the fire going. The method that I used to make these fire starters was based on an inferior method to the one below. The method below seems like it would soak the cotton balls far better than the way that I did it, but it still worked well enough.

So I had matches and I had cotton balls covered in Vaseline, but what I didn’t have was precut, pre-dried and pre-packaged wood for burning. The area where we built the fire had plenty of downed trees ready for burning, but the many inches of rain that fell the previous week soaked everything around and made it very hard to get anything going. All the wood was waterlogged. Frustrating. Seems like I didn’t plan that too well.

I have heard people use words like “nursing” to describe what it means to build a fire, and I couldn’t imagine a better word. I have two kids and I know the effort and attention that has to be paid to them to make sure that they succeed. Like raising children, building a fire was far more effort than I thought it would be.

Our problem was mainly preparation. Like most men, we got excited and jumped right in, but we weren’t prepared for the difficulty involved. We did not prepare wood ahead of time, so we scrambled constantly to find and cut branches and logs. We thought, at first, that starting the fire was going to be hard. It was not. Especially with the cotton balls that I brought (they only needed a single spark to set them ablaze). The hard part was nursing the fire to maturity. Breathing into it oxygen and feeding it fuel, it took nearly 20 minutes of intense work to get it to the point that we could enjoy it.

Franticly gathering, cutting, organizing and adding the wood to the fire was a lot of work. But it was well worth it! It kept us warm built our spirits and convinced us that next time, we would do it much better.

This is how I felt…

Cotton Balls and Vaseline…

One day I want to hop onto a moving freight train and let it take me wherever it will. Once I get where it’s going, I would turn right back around and hike home.

Yes that would be dangerous, but most things worth doing have a certain risk to them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freighthopping

The life that I had built had very little to do with outdoor experiences, unless you count my countless treks in a borrowed warthog across the open tundras of the ring planet Halo as outdoorsy.?!

But I watched, wondered and dreamed. But these images of beautiful Pacific Islands and snow covered mountains, even in HD, could not satisfy my appetite for grandeur. I could not smell the crisp pines or feel the warmth of the morning sun while hiking across a glacier. I could not feel the cool mountain water spray across my face from a waterfall in the distance, or hear the cries and calls of animals up and active as I try to sleep.

The mountains and waterfalls, the deserts and prairies, the lions, tigers and bears, oh my! It sounds like fun. But watching alone would never fulfill me.

My life was average, and I was OK with that. But Survival TV challenged everything. Now I need to do these things. I need to have these experiences for myself, and not live vicariously through a TV host.

So I set out to live life and not just be entertained by others living it. I will no longer only watch passively, but I will participate actively.

Although, I think (at least for now), Bear can keep the grubs and larva for himself…