The Camping Myth That Has Killed More People Than Bears Ever Did

I own a can of bear spray, and there's country I won't walk into without it. But in all my years, of the people I've known of who went into these woods and never came back out, not one of them was taken by anything with teeth. Every one died of something he did himself, and most of them died doing the very thing everybody in this country is told to do when things go wrong. They walked. Everybody prepares for the wrong death. In this one I want to show you the piece of arithmetic behind that — the reason search and rescue works outward in a circle from your last known point, and what that circle does to the ground they have to cover for every mile you keep walking. It's simple enough that a child could do it on his fingers, and I've never once heard anybody say it out loud around a fire. Once you've heard it, you'll understand why the old ones' rule was the exact opposite of what your body will scream at you to do. We cover why the urge to keep moving is so strong and why it isn't stupidity, the hour people lose telling themselves they're only nearly lost, the old stop-think-then-act sequence, why walking downhill because it's easy is the other half of the same myth, how to make yourself findable with open ground, bright color, white smoke and three of anything, the right order for taking care of your body, the honest exception for when you should move, and the free two-minute habit that turns staying put from a gamble into a plan. I'm not search and rescue — if anything I say ever crosses up with what those folks tell you, listen to them and not to me. Thank you for sitting with me. Walk easy, and I'll see you down the trail.