Fear and Pain in the Desert

I was recently hired to write an article giving five tips for surviving in the desert. I’ve lived in Nevada for more than half my life, so I didn’t think I’d learn anything new in the research. Turns out I was wrong.

I found the website of a man who teaches classes about desert survival, and he made a point that has stuck with me. Most people, he writes, worry about how they’ll eat if they find themselves stranded in the desert. It’s almost always the first question students ask him. They want to know what food is edible, where to find it, how to eat it without getting sick.

The truth is, however, that in the event that you find yourself stuck in the stark, harsh environment of the desert, food is the least of your concerns. Before starvation ever becomes a real problem, you’ll die of thirst or exposure. Here’s the part that really struck me: people are scared, not of actually dying, but of the pain of hunger. If they just stay calm and learn to live with the hunger, their chances of survival are greater. Eating when you lack water dehydrates you faster, as your body needs fluids for digestion and will steal it from your organs and your brain.

I thought about this the last few days as I plunged myself back into exercise, following a multi-month break: first for illness, then for moving with my family across our big, desertic state of Nevada. It hurt. I walked half a mile to the store at the end of my street, and then half a mile back, and it hurt. My lower back screamed, my feet protested, my ribs felt tight around my lungs.

I’ve been trying for nine months or so to become the athletic person I hold in my head. My desk in my new house in Reno faces the street, where I watch scores of people bike, run, walk and jog by everyday. I want to be one of them. I want to run races, dance in public, swim like I’m not drowning, join a roller derby team — the list is endless. But it hurts to walk a mile.

Pain, of course, is often the body’s warning signal that something is wrong. But sometimes it’s also the protest of old bones and muscles that haven’t been used properly in a long time. I thought about what the desert expert said, about fear of the pain of hunger misplacing the true dangers of being in the desert, as I learned yesterday at the gym, and kept moving even when stopping sounded like a fantastic idea.

Maybe not moving isn’t quite as dramatic as being lost in the desert and choosing between starvation and dying of thirst. The biggest danger is that I’ll look back someday and regret the things I didn’t do because I was afraid of pain. I’ve committed to participating in the Reno-Tahoe Odyssey relay race next June. Somehow, I’ll have to take myself from one mile hurting to being able to finish three legs of a 178-mile course shared by 12 runners (erm… or walkers.)

Not moving because I’m afraid to, though, seems tragic. Once upon a time, everyone who knew me considered me an athlete. Now there’s just me, fostering the idea in my head that the act of moving past the fear of pain and pushing forward makes me an almost-4o-year-old, 340-pound athlete.