It all started the year before when I went on a nine day Primitive Survival trip with Cody Lundin of Dual Survival. During that nine days I learned to Flint-Knapp, make a gourd canteen, hunt for food and make friction fire and I loved the whole experience and now I wanted more. I wanted to find an experience where I pushed the limits of my own limitations to see how I would react.
Cody had another survival course called the Desert Drifter where we would go into the wilderness with the clothes on our back, a map and a water bottle. It was what I was looking for, a raw in your face experience so that I could face unknown fears and find what blocks me in life. The Desert Drifter was the hardest of Cody’s survival courses where we would go out into the Arizona desert for six nights and seven days.
I arrived at Cody’s school in Prescott, Arizona and straight away I knew this was going to be different. We were told to go through our gear and were told that for the first night that we were allowed to bring a trash bag, two quart water bottles, another layer for the top, a hat, and two bandana’s. There were eight of us our tribe and I was the only woman mad another for such an adventure and so high up in the Arizona mountains we started our journey together. Like any journey in the beginning everyone is happy, smiling and trying to get to know each other as we descended off our mountain top to where we had no idea.
We had been hiking to three hours or more when Cody stopped us and talked to us about making camp, how to look for a site for the night. Now I thought Cody was going to start a fire to keep us cozy and I thought how are we going to eat as it said in the brochure we would be provided with two meals a day. By now it was about an hour away from darkness and we started to collect dry grass for insulation in our trash bags as well as an insulator from the cold ground. Darkness came and Cody went to his camp for the night and so of course the guys wanted to sleep next to the only woman, I thought this for a change works in a woman’s favor. We piled together like sausages in a frying pan to keep each other warm.
I am not sure how long I slept if any before I woke shivering and feeling wet in my trash bag. I looked out of my trash bag and saw the moon shining in the cold night and thought this is going to be a long cold night. It seemed like the moon took her time gliding across the midnight sky for sunrise. When the sun finally came out we all got up quickly to get moving to our unknown destination.
Our first priority each morning would be water. We had two quarts each and three MSR Dromedary bags for the group. We came across a spring in the canyon we were in and Cody had liquid Iodine to disinfect the water.
Then we made our way into the day and the hot Arizona sun that was starting to make herself known. We Had hiked four about five hours and I was beginning to feel the hot sun affect me, I was starting to get a headache and my body was dragging. One of the guys in the group began to get the affects of heat stroke and so we found a place out of the sun to rest. I quickly snuggled on my side and fell asleep and was woken with the guys looking at me. Cody found some salt and passed it around for each of us to take a pinch to replace the salts we had lost. Bad news we were only half way to where we were supposed to be heading. This is when I began to doubt myself and thought what the hell was I thinking, I mean I could be in Hawaii relaxing at some top notch spa not in the middle of the desert with seven men who have not showered and have had no food. I paid for this, really!
I was no longer aware of the time but knew it had to be late afternoon with the shadows on the ground. Cody said we were getting close but that last mile to our stop seemed the hardest and longest. The guys started talking about food already and were hoping there was a food stash somewhere. It’s amazing when your body go’s without food for just even a day that you can feel it physically but mostly your mind starts to play tricks on you and I can see how people become obsessed with food and get into real trouble fast. I see this section of our journey is about overcoming the mind.
However, when we finally made it to our last water source for the evening it was a brown cow paddy and thought there is no way I am drinking that crap, literally!
But Cody told us to drink up and refill our water bottles. I have to say that there was a texture to the water, a kind of pasty brown feel and look to it. After filling up we as a tribe found a campsite for the evening and then Cody said he was going for a walk. It was now starting to get dark and we began to wonder where Cody was and also that again tonight we will have to sleep in our trash bags again. Oh well this is what I signed up for!
Finally Cody showed up with a smile on his face and handed us fresh apples and said the rest of our gear was up in a tree. It was a moment of joy and happiness for the rest of the gear would include a blanket, pants, one quart bag of trail mix and socks and I thought that was luxury compared to what we had the night before. Oh yeah there was no underwear it’s what we had on that was counted as contraband.
In the morning everyone was energized but before we could head out into the day I had developed blisters on my heels and now were bleeding and needed Cody to cut some of the blister away and patch it up.
We had also decided to have Indian names for each of us from Muffin top, Blisters, Buddha, Humphrey, IT and more that I can no longer remember. When we came to a short stop my blisters were now painful again and this time instead of crazy gluing my blisters I needed them to be padded as it was now making limp.
We had hiked for about five hours this day and came to our camp for the night and yeas Cody made a fire for us while showing us how to make a bowdrill fire, but we had fire! it felt amazing to feel that heat for the first time in days and we all crowded and laughed and joked despite having no food.
That night however the temperature dropped down to the mid-thirties and it was raining. With one blanket we all hugged tight together to keep each warm but we were all shivering and I know I was beginning to shake. We must have dropped off to sleep when in the middle of the night Cody woke us up and said to take a right on the Jeep trail and follow it until we find Cody, then he disappeared into the cold, damp night. We all slowly got up and packed our gear and started walking in the dead of night but I was glad to have my body moving to stop the shivering on this full moon night.
We finally came to Cody five hours later and daylight and all of were happy to see him.
We were now dropping in elevation and away from the mountains and now we dropped into a canyon where we were to stay until the end of our journey. Also for the first time in a couple of days the sun came out to welcome us into the canyon. My feet were now hurting and starting to swell becasue of the blisters that were now open wounds but I was not going to whine about it. However Cody noticed my limping and once again put crazy glue on the wound to try and seal them. We were now heading into the canyon where we would finally come to a river so putting a blister kit would be a waste of material as we walked the river.
For the next two days we stayed by the Green river and it was warmer and we found crayfish and catails to eat, the most we had eaten all week and I fell into a deep slumber.
Our last night we made a sweat lodge and it was an awesome experience of being in nature and sweating out our burdens not only of our past week but also of our lives. I then jumped in the cold river and felt reborn from this amazing journey over the past week and felt emboldened to go forward in my life and have nothing hold me back anymore.
By Sharon Page all@rights reserved
October 17, 2011
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