Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

Author:Laurence Gonzales
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2003-03-17T05:00:00+00:00

SO, WITH REASON pretty much out of the picture and emotion driving hard toward survival strategies, Killip started down the wrong drainage as darkness and rain fell around him. It was the absence of a mental map of the place in which he found himself that caused the amygdala to begin sending danger signals. People recognize as good such places as the location of food, water, and members of the opposite sex. That’s a primary task of adaptation and survival. People also recognize dangerous places. And it makes perfect sense that a dangerous place to be is one for which you have no mental map, for then you’d be unable to find food, water, or a mate.

Killip’s seemingly irrational behavior makes sense when viewed from the brain’s point of view. The fact of not having a mental map, of trying to create one in an environment where the sensory input made no sense, is interpreted as an emergency and triggers a physical (i.e., emotional) response. In the emergency of being no place, Killip’s action makes sense to the organism, even though it later seems illogical. The organism needed him to hurry up and try to get some place quickly, a place that matched his mental map, a place that would provide access to the essentials of survival. This impulse explains Syrotuck’s observation that people panic when they become lost. It gives a working definition of being lost: the inability to make the mental map match the environment.

So it was that Killip found himself blundering through dense timber in total darkness with the creepy feeling of knowing that he was nowhere. A chance flicker of lightning ignited reflections on a pond. Parched with thirst, Killip headed for it. He drank his fill and prepared to spend the night. He had no choice now. But he wasn’t thinking straight. He had food in his pack, but York had the tent. Killip had garbage bags but didn’t use them for a makeshift shelter. Although he needed a fire, wanted its warmth and light, he knew that open fires weren’t permitted in this part of the park. As a firefighter, he felt he ought to follow that rule. (If he had made a fire, he might have been seen and rescued sooner.)

When a bear appeared, Killip got up and charged the animal, waving his jacket at it and shouting. The bear went away. Then Killip wondered what would have happened if he’d been injured so far from help.

He was able to heat a meal on his camp stove. Then he fell asleep.

When he awoke, he felt somewhat refreshed. But he would not recover from his fatigue and confusion that quickly. He still had the option of retracing his steps to his car. He could go back up the drainage. But he felt that he could not simply leave York and spoil the trip. York would be thinking: What a nitwit. And anyway, Killip didn’t yet quite believe that he was lost.

Admitting that you are

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