Taming fear is the key in the wild

Anyone who has spent much time in-country in Alaska has witnessed fear, maybe even found themselves up close to it.

There is no shame in that. There are times and places where if you are not scared you are stupid, or dead or about to be dead.

Old mountaineers, paddlers and adventurers of all sorts talk about the "pucker factor." This being a family publication, it's not possible to go into a total explanation of what that means, but most readers of this column will know or can guess.

There's a tightening of a certain part of the anatomy that warns of danger. The key to survival in life is to avoid letting that part of the anatomy overpower the part that does the thinking.

Sometimes this is easier said than done.

The danger of fear lives in the quick and deceptive ease with which it can turn to panic. An ember of concern is fanned by nagging doubts that burst into a confusion of emotions that obscure rational thought in a fog.

People in crisis situations all too often stop thinking right because they can't think right.

You see it happen to good but underexperienced backcountry skiers in steep couloirs filled with the great corn snow of the Alaska spring. All you need to ski these places at these times is confidence.

If you can merely convince yourself to hang your face out over space and just let the skis ride, they will find a superb hold on the snow and all will be fine. Let the fear of falling take over, though, and the stage is set for that proverbial, self-fulfilling destiny.

If you are afraid of falling, you will fall.

You will lean into the slope. Your skis will lose the edge that holds them to the mountain. And you will go down.

I am ashamed to say I once abandoned a friend struggling with this self-doubt high on a Chugach Mountain slope. He was with another, good skier, also a friend, so it wasn't like I deserted him completely. But to this day I feel a little guilty about leaving the one to talk the other down the mountain. Both, thankfully, have forgiven me.

For me, the snow was too good to resist. For another, the conditions were foreign and scary, and some equipment that was less than ideal for the moment heightened the anxieties instead of helping suppress them. It was a bad mix.

I have been thinking about fear a lot lately because it seems everyone I know is scared.

The world economy is in turmoil, and the newspaper business even more so. The pay for newspaper scribblers has never been much, but at least in the past there was a certain sense of security that if you did the job even half well there would be a job.

No more.

People in the news business, like people in so many other businesses, are getting laid off all over the place. Some bad people are gone, but a lot of good people are gone too, and most of the best of the young. We appear to be mimicking the natural world in that regard.

When the winters are harsh, it is predominately the young animals that die or the very old or -- almost always -- the fit ones that panic.

The one thing the Alaska wilderness will teach you, possibly the most important thing it will ever teach you, is that panic is never a good thing. People who panic have a sad history of ending up dead or injured. The only way you can survive out there is to tamp down the fear and move forward. There's a life lesson in this for all of us.

I can't help thinking here about Jake Collins from Wasilla. He fell off a cliff in the Wrangell Mountains in August 2007. He suffered a massive brain injury. He went into convulsions. He could easily have died at the young age of 22.

But his father, Rick, in a supreme example of pushing back panic in order to think clearly saved Jake's life. Rick made the difficult decision to abandon his obviously dying son to try to organize a rescue even though help was more than a day away. Rick covered the young man as best he could so the ravens wouldn't arrive to peck his eyes out, and took off across the wilderness with his fears bottled up.

He held it together. He made the Nabesna Road. He got in touch with the National Park Service. And the brave men of the 210th and 211th Rescue Squadrons of the Alaska National Guard were summoned to stage another miraculous Alaska rescue.

Today, Jake is doing fine.

Find Craig Medred online at adn.com/contact/cmedred or call 257-4588.