Will you scratch my back? (Shown: the author's; photo: Bill Hatcher/Outside)

First law of adventure-travel survival: Heed not the blasé reassurances of locals when you raise issues of life and flesh.

Case in point:

I was headed to the Amazon rainforest of northern Peru to do a survival trip with a local guide. We’d live off the land, forage for food, build our own shelter. I’d report for a feature article for Outside magazine.

What would I need to bring?

Nothing but a machete, per the cheery owner of the jungle lodge who set up the trip for me.

Uh, but what about bugs? Jungle = mosquitoes, no?

“There’s a marvelous natural repellent that indigenous people use,” said the lodge owner. “Moises (the guide) will show you.”

So I didn’t include more than a dram of bug juice in my cheat bag, which also included a toothbrush and iodine tablets. If the locals have survived for eons without DEET, I could last a week.

By the second day of the trip, I found myself constantly waving off an ether of flying bugs. I’d sweated away my tiny bit of 100-proof repellent in short order. “You drink too much water,” Moises informed me. But I wasn’t sure that dehydration was the best prophylactic for biting insects.

“Hey Moises, what about that natural insect repellent Paul told me about? Think we could scare some up?”

Moises nodded. And not soon enough, he paused and pointed to a giant carbuncle growing on the limb of a tree. A termite nest. Here’s the drill: You stick your fist inside it and wait for a steady queue of termites to scuttle down your arm, shoulder, and neck. Then you rub the critters into your flesh. That’s right—simply squash them into your pores.

The result is a pleasant-smelling, woodsy cologne. Termites, after all, eat nothing but wood. I smelled like freshly gnawed tree. Nice.

Next logical question: “Hey Moises—how long does this stuff last?”

“Oh, about 10 minutes.”

And he was right. The truth is, indigenous people only use termite juice to disguise their scent while hunting. Insect repellency is a short-lasting side effect.

I spent the rest of the week at the mercy (none) of the bugs. Or in the river. (Piranhas were preferable to mosquitoes.) Or covered inside long sleeves and trousers while surrounded by the desperate din of airborne cannibals. I.e., rainforest-sauna hot.

I stopped itching after two weeks. —Robert Earle Howells

Robert Earle Howells’s website is Surefire Writing: http://www.surefirewriting.com. You can read the full account of his rainforest experience at http://www.bobhowells.com. The film he made about it can be viewed at http://www.snagfilms.com/films/title/the_rainforest_wisdom_of_moises_chavez.

Are we there yet?

I was at the Aga Khan
University in Karachi, organizing a writing workshop, when the call came in.

“Oh no,” whispered my colleague. 
”That’s bad. That’s terrible.”

She turned to me. “Benazir Bhutto has been assassinated. We want you to go home
 right now.”

She called for Zabair, the toughest and most experienced driver in the pool. He led me outside to a reinforced pickup truck, made sure I was belted in, and pulled out into the worst traffic in the world.

Nobody knew what to expect. Riots? Invasion by the Taliban, by India, by the U.S.? Everyone in Karachi, a city of nearly 20 million, had a single thought: get home.

Outside the university walls, the traffic wasn’t just bumper-to-bumper—it was
 door-to-door and elbow-to-elbow. A three-lane road had five lanes of 
traffic, a four-lane road had seven: small family cars, vast 
trucks painted with bright designs and verses from the Koran, taxis (some so battered they were literally shapeless, held 
together by fiberglass patching), scores of motorbikes and mopeds swarming the sidewalks and threading the gaps between car bumpers.

Traffic in Pakistan tends to be an open-faced sandwich anyway, with very 
little hidden or enclosed, and tonight this was even more true. 

Hand-carts, donkey-carts, a boy on a bicycle carrying two large wooden
 crates, two boys on a moped carrying an extension ladder and metal 
piping, a family of five squeezed into the bed of a tiny pickup along with what looked like a giant refrigerator. Another family of five on a 
motorbike. The brightly-painted buses had twenty or more people on the 
roof. Everyone looked like a refugee.



People swarmed the sidewalks, flooded into the roads. Scores of mopeds and small motorbikes raced up the sidewalks or picked their way between the larger vehicles, sometime perpendicular to the stream, sometimes in the opposite direction. It’s a wonder we didn’t see crushed pelvises on every corner.

Twice our pickup flipped the wing-mirror of a bus. Once we crunched a woman’s car as she crowded in front of our bumper. “Well, go on then!” Zabair shouted in Urdu, and she pulled into the tiny space that had opened ahead.

Night fell. The whole scene was becoming surreal. The shops had closed early, in self-protection. Tail lights and brake lights shone dimly through dust and exhaust. The traffic got steadily worse. Gas was running out: motorbikes were being pushed, cars abandoned. Eventually we reached a two-lane on-ramp to an overpass and it became clear that nothing would go any farther. People swarmed out of their cars or climbed on their roofs.

Nobody was in charge. When I’d arrived in Karachi, just five hours previously, 
every road had a soldier lounging at the corner or on a bridge. Now
 there was no sign of them, nor of police to help sort out the 
traffic.

Yet, astonishingly, there was no sense of threat. It was only later in the evening that a feeling of 
grievance would emerge here and there, tires would be burned, shots will be fired (mostly into the air), campaign billboards would be pulled down and torched, the belief in Pakistan being that everything comes down to politics, and all politics is corrupt. For now, people were standing around watching, talking, even joking. One boy of maybe nine grinned as he helped his father push their car.

In the end, Zabair backed up, bumped across a construction site under the overpass and found a detour, then another, and finally we got to my host’s home, the 25-minute journey taking more than three hours. Indoors, we stared at the TV. Still, nobody knew what would happen, but I felt I’d been granted a vision of how the world will end: not with a bang but with a final apocalypse of traffic.—Tim Brookes

Tim Brookes’ latest book is Thirty Percent Chance of Enlightenment.

Don't spend it all in one place.

Here’s the first of three excerpts from Letters to Zerky, an account of Bill Raney and his wife JoAnne’s travels along with their 18-month old son Zerky (and their miniature dachshund Tarzan) across Europe and through Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Sikkim, Assam, Thailand, and Hong Kong in 1967 and 1968 in a VW van. Because Zerky was too young to remember his adventure, his father wrote him a series of letters along the way, while his mother kept a diary. The book, released in November, comes recommended by Three Cups of Tea author Greg Mortenson.

Letter From Ghazni, Afghanistan, November 29, 1967

Dear Zerky,

Your mom has a lot of class. This morning as we were getting ready to leave Kandahar for Kabul, we remembered that we didn’t have any Afghan money. Unable to find a bank in Kandahar, your mother decided to try to change money at the hotel where we were camped. “But they just won’t let us do that,” I told her. “We haven’t even rented a room, and we look like a busload of hippies.”  “I’ll take care of it,” she replied.

She spent the next hour getting all dolled up. Both of us have brought along one set of good clothes, “just in case.” Prior to arriving in the wilds of Afghanistan, neither of us has worn them. Your mom put on her white blouse and her brown suit.

“Why not wear that cute little Tyrolean costume instead,” I badgered, “the one that makes your boobs look like they’re hanging out.”  “Sure, that would be perfect for a Moslem country,” she countered. Next came the nylons, then the high heels, then half an hour of doing her hair, nails and makeup. “You look like a million bucks,” I told her, begrudgingly.  “That’s the idea,” she replied, as she marched off to battle.

Fifteen minutes later she was back with a big wad of weird-looking bills. “How did you talk them into it?” I asked.

Your mother then explained to me, as if to a child, that she hadn’t talked them into anything—she just didn’t give them the opportunity to say no. She had come to Afghanistan on business, she told the hotel manager. She explained that she was in the motion picture business in San Francisco. “San Francisco is near Hollywood, California. You’ve heard of Hollywood, California, haven’t you?” Indeed he had. Then she explained that the price of making movies in Hollywood, California is exorbitant. “The cost of making movies in Afghanistan must be very reasonable in comparison, “don’t you think?” He did.

“And what with all your colorful tribesmen, beautiful deserts, and spectacular mountains,” she larded it on, “I’m sure American audiences would love to see your faraway beautiful land.”

Had he read the recent best-seller, James Michener’s Caravans? she asked innocently. “It’s all about Afghanistan.” He didn’t read English, of course. “Everybody’s reading it in America,” she went on. Finally she explained how she had arrived in Afghanistan only yesterday, and had not yet had the opportunity to exchange her American dollars. “Are there many such grand hotels as this in Afghanistan?” she flattered.

“Did you offer him the starring role?” I interjected.

“How much would you like to exchange?”  he asked her.

There’s no business like show business. —Bill and JoAnne Walker Raney

Nice and cozy.

Writer Jeff Alt sent us an excerpt from from Chapter 24 of his new book, ‘A Walk for Sunshine.’

[Adds Alt: This is my second night hiking the Appalachian Trail.  I’ve assembled camp in a shelter on top of Blood Mountain, Georgia...]

I turned off my headlamp and burrowed deep into my sleeping bag to keep warm. In spite of the cold, I managed to doze off sometime later, only to be awakened by a heavy object moving across my feet and lower legs. I could hear my heart beating over the sound of an unknown creature moving around on top of my legs. Not knowing what to expect, I cautiously reached out, grabbed my flashlight, and turned it on. A skunk was lying on my sleeping bag! I cautiously nudged it with my foot, and it jumped off the platform, raising its tail. Great. The last thing I needed was a putrid scent on my gear and body, but the skunk didn’t spray me. Instead, it ducked out of sight under the bunk platform, which was about eight inches off the ground.

I took out my candle and lit it. I figured the little critter would leave me alone, being afraid of flames. I was wrong. Twenty minutes later, I felt the weight drop on my feet and legs again, I sat up, and there he was, sprawled out on my sleeping bag again. The candle had given him enough light to precisely place his body between my legs on my bag. I decided that he just wanted to keep warm and that he was going to stay there, so I lay back down. Believe it or not, I actually fell asleep with a skunk on my feet. — Jeff Alt

Fulla, the Muslim Barbie.

After spending five anxious days in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, hanging out in a Bedouin tent with an international fugitive who’s wanted as a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist”—a character who figured prominently in a story I was reporting about a Muslim charity in southern Oregon with purported links to al Qaeda—I was relieved to finally be en route to Portland, albeit standing at the tail end of a line that was advancing glacially toward a distant security checkpoint at Frankfurt Main Airport.

As the final boarding call for my connecting flight home echoed through the cavernous hall, I thrust the shopping bag that I’d been lugging onto the conveyor, and waited anxiously at the end of the X-ray machine for my bag, growing increasingly agitated the longer it failed to appear. The scanner technician motioned for his superior, and then a security guard, toting my bag, asked me to follow him into another room, where he asked me to empty the contents of the bag onto a table. First I pulled out a silk black abaya and boshiya (traditional Saudi dress and veil) for my six-year-old daughter, then a white thobe and red checkered ghutra (robe and headdress) for my eight-year-old son.

No problem there. Then I remembered the toys.

On the way to King Khalid International Airport, my Saudi host made a detour at a toy store, and had picked out two dolls for my kids that he insisted were all the rage in Riyadh. So out came “Fulla,” the Saudi version of Barbie, robed and veiled in black, accessorized with a prayer rug. The guard pressed the button on Fulla’s back and looked at me quizzically when the doll called out to Allah, praying in Arabic. He stiffened when I presented him with a Saudi G.I. Joe, a bearded, chamo-clad airborne ranger toting an automatic rifle, bandolier, grenades and dagger. “Fur die kinder!” I said lamely, as the guard, registering his disapproval, swabbed the toys and ran the sample through a mobile mass spectrometer.

For a few tense seconds that ticked like minutes, I wondered if I’d been set up by my host. Then the explosives detector spat out its reading: Negative. And I was on my way. My daughter has never played with Fulla, whose muffled prayers sometimes sound when she’s jostled in her resting place at the bottom of the toybox. But that plastic Saudi warrior stands at attention on a prominent shelf in my son’s room. A gift that traveled all the way from Arabia.

He calls it his “Jihad Joe.” —Ted Katauskas is a former magazine writer currently based in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Business meetings ought to be a bit more exciting.

Here’s the last of three tales from Greg Dobbs, an Emmy-winning producer and correspondent for 23 years with ABC, taken from his new book, Life in the Wrong Lane - Why Journalists Go In When Everyone Else Wants Out.

From the chapter I WAS ONLY DRIVING AN AMBULANCE ON THE RUSSIAN FRONT

(On Dobbs’ meeting with an arms dealer in Beirut)

Just as quickly as my contact had appeared out of nowhere, two more guys did the same. But they didn’t sit down at the table. They towered over it.

My tablemate started shaking. Not a single word from our visitors, but he seemed to know who they were and why they were there, and he was shaking, and starting to mutter, and then squeal, “No, not me, no, not me, nooo  …”

It didn’t really seem like a party where I wanted to stay. But it didn’t seem like I could just get up and leave, either.

It felt like they stood there for a minute or so, just staring down at this guy next to me. But there was a message in their eyes: “Come peacefully, or not. Up to you.”

Not.

I don’t think the shaking man at my side actually made some kind of conscious decision to hold his ground. I think he was just too scared to move. So they moved first. These two thugs reached over the table, each grabbing this guy under one arm, and pulled him across. Coffee cups and cream and sugar bowls went flying, but hey, the owner can always buy more.

My contact wasn’t just squealing anymore, he was screaming. “Noo, nooo, pleeeese, noooo, nooooo, noooooo!”

Three things flew through my mind: 1) Live by the sword, die by the sword; 2) Maybe instead of journalism school, I should have gone to law school; 3) I was really glad I never learned the guy’s name.

Now let me tell you what happened with our eyes: mine never met his. The abductors were bad guys, but he was too, and I didn’t want any part of his problem.

And their eyes never met mine. They were about as interested in me as they were in the porcelain now shattered on the floor. Thank goodness!

The other customers, veterans of life in Beirut, never looked up. Well, maybe once, but then they quickly resumed the appearance of non-involvement that had kept them alive so far through all the years of Lebanon’s civil war.

That was the last time I saw the guy who sent me a message to meet him at the Alexander. The last time I even heard about him. His abductors had to drag him, kicking uselessly, all the way to a car. My hearing’s not so hot, but I could hear him screaming ’til they slammed the door on their way out. I don’t suppose he screamed much longer.

That might have been the end of it. But I couldn’t be sure. Some mysterious American arms dealer had just been dragged kicking and screaming from a hotel coffee shop by a couple of mysterious Arab thugs, and I was the other guy at the table. Worse still, he had left the briefcase.

—Greg Dobbs

Here’s the 2nd of three tales from Greg Dobbs, an Emmy-winning producer and correspondent for 23 years with ABC, taken from his new book, Life in the Wrong Lane - Why Journalists Go In When Everyone Else Wants Out.

[From the chapter CHAMPAGNE FROM A STYROFOAM CUP, on covering the revolution in Iran]

The Ayatollah’s aides—the president destined to be exiled, the foreign minister destined to be executed—had promised me an interview with Khomeini. So I went with a crew and a translator—Behray Taidi, an out of work English-speaking Iranian TV cameraman whom we had hired to work with us—to the elementary school in Tehran that had been Khomeini’s headquarters since he returned in triumph.

The schoolyard, surrounded by a chain link fence, was packed with people. Khomeini’s entourage had announced that he would hold a public audience. What that meant was, he’d stand at a window and weakly wave his hand at the masses.

We pushed our way in. The pictures would be great.

Bad decision. Once we were in, we couldn’t get back out. And with more people pushing in, neither could anyone else. It wasn’t like squeezing ten pounds into a five-pound bag. It was like squeezing a hundred pounds into the bag.

By the time we were near the Ayatollah, we couldn’t move. Not under our own power anyway. The crush was so tight that we, like everyone else, got picked up and carried by the human tide. If your arm was down at your side, you couldn’t lift it. If it was up in the air, you couldn’t bring it down.

Behray had a Rolex wristwatch. It came off. There was nothing he could do. To try to reach for it on the ground would have doomed him to death by crushing. Several people did die that day in the schoolyard.

Ironically, we have the Ayatollah himself to thank for our lives. Standing at the corner window, weakly waving his hand at his subjects who were pinned in too tight to wave back, he saw us in the crush and signaled to his aides. They nudged Khomeini away from the window and reached out for us, pulling us one by one across the windowsill and into the room. Ayatollah Khomeini. What a guy. —Greg Dobbs

To buy Dobbs’ new book, ‘LIFE IN THE WRONG LANE’ (iUniverse), click here.

Do you feel lucky punk? Well, do ya?

Ever wonder what it’s like to be a far-flung correspondent for T.V. news? Let’s just say it’s no walk in the park. This week Greg Dobbs, an Emmy-winning producer and correspondent for 23 years with ABC and currently a correspondent for HDNet TV, shares a few priceless tales of woe from his new book, Life in the Wrong Lane - Why Journalists Go In When Everyone Else Wants Out. Here’s the first of three. Thanks Greg. I hope you enjoy his misfortunes as much as I do. — Ed.

[Note: the following is from a chapter about Dobbs covering the Indian occupation of Wounded Knee.]

Let's just take the bus. We'll be there in no time!

It was my 2nd time on Esquel, a sleepy mountain town in Argentine Patagonia known for its fishing and a gem of a ski area. This time I was with my ski buddy, Tyler from Montana, and was eager to show him what I’d discovered in my prior 9-day stint. I was staying in a new hostel for a change of scenery and, as we left, Federico, the patron of the hostel, asked if we needed transport to the mountain, a 30 peso fee. I explained to him we would be taking the local bus to a hitchhiking spot, but Federico said the bus didn’t go there.

‘Yeah yeah, he doesn’t know I’ve already used it,’ I thought, secure in prize knowledge shared from 2 savvy Swiss skiers, all of 19 years old. I knew. The drill is: once on the bus, ask the driver to be let out at the puente (bridge) then walk 4 blocks to the access road, thumb it, then use the extra 30 pesos for a wonderful bottle of Malbec back in town. Still Federico insisted the bus does not go to the puente, but I chalked it up to linguistic difficulties and ignored him…

After only a couple minutes, we boarded the bus. Clambering on, I said “a puente” and the driver mumbled something incomprehensible. I repeated myself; again, the disgruntled response. He was impossible to understand. Finally he said “terminal” which meant the bus station at least, and that was in the right direction, so I nodded and off we lurched.

The bus was already crowded and we were ready to shred, clad in ski boots, backcountry ski packs, our skis and poles in hand. With my ski pole straps around my wrist I reached for the overhead bar and my ski pole tip flung upwards inches from an old lady´s face. “Disculpa” I said, embarassed. Gringos making quite the scene. Each stop more students and people with grocery bags piled on, all gawking at us. We were already standing, but now getting pressed on from all sides. Tyler looked at me with a ‘wow’ expression on his face. I was trying to play it cool, but my own face was getting hot.

We came to the road of the terminal but we turned. . . the other way. I had not yet been to this part of the town. Patiently I figured we would eventually make it. The pavement ended and we delved into the slums. The old lady began saying something to me, gesturing at our ski gear. For some reason I could not understand a word, and I swear my Spanish is not that bad. She kept at it and finally I responded point blank, “no entendiendo” — I don’t understand! — and she left at the next stop without a word or a glance. ‘This is getting ugly’, I thought. Tyler´s glance said it all. “Where the hell are we going?”

Deeper into the project housing we went, farther away from the puente, the access road, the ski area. I was feeling the responsibility and the guilt. Soon the bus was nearly empty and we headed back towards town. I was clueless, defeated, and could barely look at my friend. Back in town, the bus filled up again and soon we passed the stop that we had originally boarded. I wanted to get off and and crawl into my uncomfortable dormitorio bed and hide. I could not even say anything to my friend, stricken mute. Unbelievably, we were heading down the same path and the bus was crowded as hell, again. This time at the terminal road, the bus stopped and the driver honked and started yelling “terminal, terminal!” amazingly he was not ignoring us the 2nd time around. We barged off the bus, banging all sorts of locals and kids with our gear, the sidewalk never feeling so good. We were at least back in control of our direction, nevermind that we were 20 blocks from the access road. In ski boots.

Mercifully we scored a ride rather quickly and made it to the ski area a mere 75 minutes later than planned. But once there, we learned all the lifts were closed due to high winds, so we gave up and headed to the apres-ski bar for beers. I could still barely look at my friend, feeling like such a gringo idiot, and muttered “I sure hope this will be funny someday.”
The silver lining? We’d saved our lift ticket money, at least. The mountain had been open before Mother Nature shut it down. More pesos for Malbec I guess. — Joshua Boulange

Teamwork builds character!

Isn’t delving into deep nature a feast for the soul? Yeah, sure it is! Except when it becomes more like ‘Lord of the Flies’. Here’s a new yarn from Tetsuhiko Endo on that all-American rite of passage, the Outward Bound adventure, and what happens when the counselors think you’ve reached a higher plane and  leave you to your own devices, lost in a giant bog. Enjoy — Ed.

In the summer before my senior year of high school, I went on a canoeing and climbing trip, with Outward Bound, in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area of Minnesota. I was seventeen, and had just spectacularly bombed out of a 10-year junior tennis career with a very public burnout. Suddenly finding myself without the usual summer of traveling to tournaments around the country, trying to smite other stressed out 17 year-olds, it seemed like an opportune time to go on a bit of an adventure.

Before choosing the trip, I had never heard of the Boundary Waters. It is a vast region of wilderness between the border of Minnesota and Ontario that was home to roughly 1,200 interconnected lakes. The pictures were pretty and I had just gotten into rock climbing, so, why not? What I failed to notice about the pictures was that they were all taken from the air. That’s because the Boundary Waters is a far nicer place to look down of from a bush plane than to slog through with a canoe. But more on that later…

Soon enough, I found myself in Duluth, Minnesota playing trust-building games with a group of strangers who I would spend the next two weeks with, alone in the wilderness. The caring and sincere people of Outward Bound firmly believe in the transformative power of nature on the human soul. Because of this, roughly half of the group was made up kids who, due to some legal transgression or another, had been ordered by a judge to have their souls transformed in the Boundary Waters. Another quarter of the group had behavioral problems like ADD and/or Tourettes, and the rest were insufferable little pricks. Lest you think I’m throwing stones here, I was, undoubtedly, the worst of the lot. Far and away the physically fittest of the group, with pathological amounts self confidence, I made it my duty to prove to everyone in that I was capable of any athletic feat that should present itself (this is a mental disorder, known in medical circles, as psychosis tennisilae). The most obscene part was that I actually did it, so that by the end of the trip, when I received my award for being the most capable outdoorsman, I was the only one in the group who had both gained weight, and not really learned anything.

The Outward Bound experience is based around being broken down and humbled by nature, while simultaneously rebuilding yourself through teamwork and group interaction. This is mostly done through fireside discussions over cups of Tang (hot or cold depending on your preference) that touch on subjects like fear, loyalty, life goals and how anything and everything makes you feel. Our group quickly divided itself between those who had drunk the proverbial Tang, and those who hadn’t. I found myself in the latter group based upon the fact that my only strong feelings throughout the trip were a) hate for anything related to a canoe and b) disdain for being asked to talk about my feelings two to three times a day.

This disdain was shared by the juvenile delinquents. There was Otto, who spent 95 percent of the day talking about drugs, sex, or some combination of the two. He had been packed off to Minnesota after being caught with marijuana and would actually get caught with more while on the trip. Ryan was a soft-spoken giant of a guy who usually shared my canoe. He had been done for school truancy, but was an outdoorsy type, anyway, so a few weeks in the wilderness, was basically just a vacation for him. Then there was Chris. He was conscripted after stealing his grandmother’s minivan in Duluth and managing to get to Florida, before he was picked up, a day and a half later. When asked how he did it, he just shrugged. “I just put the pedal on the floor and didn’t take it off till I hit Florida.”

The other part of the group was, in my mind, headed up by Derek who took it upon himself, every day, to instruct everyone on how they should behave in these sorts of serious, survival situations. Even the group leaders grew tired of him. His disciple was Robert, who never went anywhere without his trusty fanny pack full of survival goods. Despite being materially prepared for any eventuality, he was the only member who was completely useless in every eventuality. His life ambition was to become a marine. After them were two girls. Melissa was kind and sensitive to a fault. I don’t think she especially liked anyone on the trip, but was too polite to let on. The other girl was Kim, who didn’t like anyone or anything on the trip, and spent most days reiterating that to anyone who would listen.

The group was guided but two guys called Bill and Eric who spent a lot of time outside. You could tell, because even when they weren’t outside, and had access to soap and showers, they still smelled like moose. Both had the faint flicker of the zealot in their stare – something you can only obtain by doing a lot of communing with a higher power and drinking lots of Tang – but they were conscientious and made sure no one died.

Out into the boundary waters went our band of misfits. That year, the area was experiencing a biblical plague of black flies, so that, whenever we set foot on land, to complete one of roughly six hundred portages between lakes, we were swarmed by the things. Luckily, they would let up around sundown, just as the mosquitoes came out. One might argue that black flies, like Carrie Bradshaw, are annoying, but essentially harmless creatures seeing as how they don’t bit. That is true, but only insofar as you are never swarmed by millions of Carrie Bradshaws that cover your arms and buzz in your ears and fly into your mouth. In that case, you pray for their extinction. The other main problem was that I had signed on for a canoeing and climbing trip, but got a canoeing and portaging trip with a few days of climbing thrown in. There was no deception involved on their part; I just hadn’t realized how toilsome paddling on a lake was. I brought this up at one of our fireside heart-to-hearts, reminding them, quite elegantly I thought, that paddling was often a job given to galley slaves in the Greek and Roman empires. I had a special chat with Bill and Eric, later, in order to discuss my use of historical examples.

So we paddled, and we portaged, and we left no trace anywhere we went. Most of my days were spent in the front of a canoe with Ryan steering from in the back and Otto plopped down in the middle, entertaining us with stories about running around the Arizona dessert, high on Jimson Weed. Occasionally, we would switch him out with Chris, in order to learn how to hotwire a car or open a locked door with a credit card. In this manner, we made our way through one of our country’s last pristine wildernesses.

Toward the end of the second week, Bill and Eric, gazing at us like proud parents, announced that we were ready to begin traveling without them. They would follow the same route, but stay two lakes behind, in case something happened. This was our graduation into Mother Earth’s full embrace. We set off, solemn in the knowledge of the great responsibility conferred to us; Derek in the lead, because no one else wanted to navigate. We crossed two lakes before it all went pear-shaped.

After our second lake and a couple of wrong turns by our leader we came upon a somewhat complicated portage. Standing on the marshy ground, everyone crowded around the map and compass while alternately peering into the swampy morass that beckoned us. No one was quite able to reconcile the route on the paper with the hell we were about to wade into. By that time, it had been widely agreed that any kind of physically demanding work would fall on my back, so I was sent ahead to scout out the portage and make sure that this wasn’t one of Derek’s idiot map misreadings. Ten steps in, I was waist deep in swamp and blanketed with a mix of Carrie Bradshaws and mosquitoes. A hop, skip, and a half-mile later, I dragged myself out the back end, not sure whether I wanted to curl up and cry, or just swim through the next lake and hitchhike home (given Chris’s copious instructions, I felt pretty confident I could do it). In the end, I went back and explained the situation to my teammates, then loaded up a pack, a canoe, and set off in the lead, back into the breach.

We stumbled and slogged through the wreaking bog, weighed down by canoes and gear, covered in biting insects. Each step threatened to plunge us waist deep into hidden sinkholes. I practically ran through, unable to face the prospect of spending one more second in that God-forsaken swamp. When I reached the outlet for the second time, I tossed my canoe in the water, heaved the bags in and took one look back. The sight that greeted me looked like the final panel of Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights. Melissa was sunk up to her chest and whimpering in a sinkhole, Derek was trying to balance two backpacks while wildly slapping at mosquitoes on his face. Kim was sitting against a tree, half submerged in water, crying. Rob had managed to lose one of his army boots in the mud, and was digging through his fanny pack, apparently trying to find some way to extricate it. Otto and Chris, were both waist deep and cursing ferociously, swearing, to whatever god would listen, that they would never set foot in the woods again. Ryan appeared beside me cursing under his breath and clawing the bugs off of his arms.

“Damn, that was horrible. Think we should go back?”

Now that we had ferried our things through, it was time to head back and help the rest of the team, like we had been doing the entire trip. I turned and looked out at the clear, placid waters of the next lake then back at my suffering team, some of whom had begun to dramatically call out for help. Sweat dripped down my lower back. Mosquitoes gnawed at my neck and arms. I knew what I had to do.

“Hell no, man. They can fend for themselves.”

“Agreed.”

We hopped in the boat and kicked off, floating a few yards offshore. From that vantage point, we took off our muddy boots, dangled our feet in the water and watched the carnage unfold. Every time someone asked us to come back, I simply shrugged and shouted a halfhearted apology. Even with the added perspective of hindsight, there is nothing that could have gotten me back into that swamp. The second people to make it out were Otto and Chris, who quickly joined us in the water and effectively cleaved the already tenuous group into two warring camps. The rest didn’t make it out for another half hour or so, and when they did, they were livid. In an effort to preserve the decorum of this piece, all of the curse words in the following dialogue will be replaced with the term, “pink bunny”.

“What the pink bunny is wrong with you?” Derek Snarled.

This seemed unfair to me, given that I had actually gone through the portage more times than anyone. So I explained that to him by saying: “Suck my pink bunny, Derek.”

“You’re are such a pink bunny!” he yelled

“Yea! What is wrong with you guys?” Melissa joined in. We needed help!” there was a sense of betrayal in her voice. Guilt crept into my mind and, naturally, was reflected in my response:

“It’s not my fault that you guys couldn’t get through very quickly. I went through twice!”

“But we’re not as strong as you,” She said, looking well and truly hurt.

“That’s not my problem, Melissa!” my resolve was quickly unraveling. Luckily, Derek saved me.

“Pink bunny you! You are such a pink bunny!”

By that point we had paddled back to belatedly help our teammates load things into the canoes. I turned to Derek, unzipped my life jacket, and in the completely shameless manner that only a seventeen year old can muster, said: “Derek, if you hate me so much, why the pink bunny don’t you do something about it.”

Where all of this might have ended up, we never got to find out, because at that precise moment, Rob sprayed DEET into his own eye. For anyone not acquainted with DEET, it’s industrial-strength bug repellent that is somewhere between battery acid and botulism on the continuum of unpleasant liquids. Every time a bottle is produced, a fairy gets its wings amputated. Why Rob chose that moment, in that place to apply bug spray to his face, and then decided not to close his eyes while doing so, will forever remain a mystery to me. Although it saved me from the slapping, pushing, and name-calling fight that was likely to ensure, it did nothing to lighten my mood.

“I…I think I might be blind,” Rob wailed as the girls rushed to his aid.

“Oh, Jesus Christ. Really? Really Rob? It’s bug spray, you pink bunny. Go wash it out and let’s get out of here.”

Melissa and Kim turned and glared at me while Rob looked around wildly. “Who said that? Was that Ted? Oh, gosh, everything is dark.”

And so it came to be that, after nearly two weeks of outdoor survival training and team building, my Outward Bound group managed a full two hours of solo navigation before we had to be picked up by our guides and escorted through the rest of the trip.

Postscript:

Rob was taken to a field hospital that afternoon where he miraculously recovered his vision. We completed our journey without further casualties, unless you count Otto’s incident with the vision quest and his peace pipe. Upon returning to camp, I placed third in the outdoor adventure race in which we competed against kids from other teams. I felt sure that I could have won if I hadn’t been paired with such a slow paddler in the canoeing section of the race. After leaving Minnesota, none of those kids ever spoke to me, again. — Tetsuhiko Endo