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To "Truly Be a Man" in Nature
(Thursday, 26 June 2008) Written by greeniac121212
Last August, I helped to lead a wilderness survival trip for incoming freshmen at my school. The survival trip was unlike other backpacking trips in that we did not use sleeping bags, pads, tents, eating utensils, or camping stoves, and we spent most of our time bushwhacking (hiking off trail). Another important aspect of the trip is that we did not adhere as firmly to the principles of Leave No Trace as do other backpackers.

The principles of Leave No Trace are an outdoor ethic that backpackers follow in order to leave as light a footprint as possible on the earth while adventuring. If you're interested in reading detailed descriptions of the principles, you can check out the following website:

http://www.usscouts.org/advance/LeaveNoTrace.asp

On our trip, we did not always leave what we found in nature, because we took sticks and logs to make fire-making kits and eating utensils, and we harvested wild plants to eat. We tried to minimize how much we changed our environment, but the brush shelters we built still changed the environment to a certain extent. Also, we built a fire from natural materials every night, so we ended up building more campfires than do backpackers who use camping stoves, further altering our environment.

Over the course of our week of "survival," our trippers came to realize that they were allowed to stray form the principles of Leave No Trace more than were other incoming freshmen on other non-survival trips within the same program. Several of the trippers, the guys especially, took this as a green light for disrespecting nature: randomly ripping twigs off of trees, stepping on bugs, etc. When the other leaders and I realized this, we talked with the trippers about the issue.

One of my fellow leaders told a story that really touched me: Once there was a man who was learning wilderness survival skills from an American Indian leader. The white man went out on a solo survival trip, and he sat up in a tree waiting for a deer to come so he could speer it for food. When a deer came, the man tried to remember all of his skills about how to kill a deer as painlessly as possible, but he accidentally messed up the process, and he could see the deer was in a lot of pain. He jumped down from the tree and strangled the deer to put it out of its misery. After the trip was over, he went to his teacher and said how terrible he felt about the deer. His teacher said to him, "When you can feel that way about a blade of grass, then you will truly be a man."

I often think of this story when I see people who want to feel "macho" disrespecting nature. This story has inspired me to work to increase my own respect for nature and to continue educating others.
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