WOOF-AH

I am lying face down in a snowy parking lot in the middle of the nowhere, surrounded by a group of bewildered folks in hiking gear and plastic gloves.
"Is she breathing?" one person asks.
A middle aged man in head-to-toe camo leans over me and pretends to check my airways.
"Are you breathing?" he whispers.
"No," I whisper back with a wink.
"Pulse?" he asks.
"Nope." He straightens up and announces this to the group. A patient EMT urges him on, "what's the next step?"
"CPR!" someone responds, and I am unceremoniously flipped over. A pair steps forward and mime CPR over me. I let them carry on for a few cycles then gasp dramatically, and everyone cheers.



We are all tkaing part in a Wilderness First Aid (WFA) course, the very tip of the iceberg that is wilderness medicine.

Twenty-one of us assembled last Saturday morning to begin the course. It's a motley crew; college students and recent grads preparing for guide jobs, trail crews, firefighters, and a handful of middle aged hiking enthusiasts who are slowly looking more and more concerned. The course is the shortest one offered, only two days, and we have a lot to cover.

By the end of the first afternoon we are splinting each other with items from our backpacks. I sacrifice my beloved buff to sling a forearm, and a crazy creek becomes a great tib/fib splint. Day two gets even better, as we cover lightening strikes, burns, hypothermia, wounds, seizures--anything that can and will happen to someone in the back country. After each lesson we do scenarios, and these are by far my favorite aspect. The group is split in half, patients and rescuers. The patients are sent outside and given an illness or mishap, and once they are in position, complete with fake blood, face paint, or medical tags, the rescuers are sent to find 'em fix 'em fast. My patients seize, faint, puke, grow delirious, and drown on me, all in the parking lot. We all laugh at the thought of someone wandering into this bizarre scene, especially when I am wedged under a picnic table, 'unresponsive with a weak pulse' but giggling uncontrollably.

Overall the course was well worth the time and effort. We wilderness driven folk dream of mountains and rivers all day, and life-threatening scenarios are all too often thought of as things that happen to someone else. Except even non-life threatening accidents happen, all the time, and proper care and response is critical when the nearest road is ten, twenty, thirty miles away. Anyone who spends time in the back country should take one of these courses, someday you might be really, really glad you did. And really, when else can you ask the question "when was the last time you pooped?" to complete strangers over and over again?

Ah, and I did get one short hike in. The course was held at the ADK Loj, the heart of the Adirondack High Peaks Region. After the first day we had just enough sunlight left for a quick trip up Mt. Jo, a small but stately peak right next to the loj. I convinced a new friend to come along, and we raced the waning daylight uphill, emerging at the top of the mile or so long trail into the world of the high peaks. Winter is still laughing in the face of Spring up here, and the summit was a shifting world of blue and white and light. Banks of clouds rolled silently by, sometimes allowing a view of the massive peaks around us, sometimes reminding us that the Adirondacks really do not care about you getting your well-deserved view. I have a feeling that may have been my last taste of snowy mountain air for the season, and I will be sad to see the winter go, it's been so good to me this year. Then again, I'm sure I'll eat those words the first day I can walk outside barefoot. And hey, now if I step on a bee hive, rusty nail, etc., I've got this.