Off the grid: The outdoor stewards of safety

Spokane and the surrounding area must have a statistically high percentage of kind readers and stewards of safety. I received so many letters last week about the importance of life jackets, I cannot help but be humbled by the public’s concern.

Some of you may have noted a happy image of my family last week in an overloaded canoe floating jovially along as if naivety and good nature would suffice should disaster strike. The horrified emails filled my inbox one after the other. Some were kind (thank you) and others were less so (trust me – if I get a Darwin Award, it will be for something far, far stupider).

What occurred to me as I wrestled with the shame and blame was that many of us might simply not know what the safe practice is despite plenty of other knowledge. I am a prime example of this.

My family and dogs can all swim. We had life jackets for everyone as per regulation. We were in shallow (as in standing) water that was not moving, in a mostly no-wake zone. Our shoreline test-paddle was no expedition. The canoe was overloaded with flotation devices. I am an avid outdoors woman, a member of Search and Rescue, and would (apparently naively) even consider myself highly attuned to risk assessment and response in the Great Outdoors.

Yet recent tragedies in our communities have demonstrated that our assessment of risk is often subjective. The number of readers who kindly reached out to remind me of this reality is evidence that we often don’t know what we don’t know.

It is, after all, my first canoe. To some of you, I responded with, “So what should I do in a canoe?” Which might be slightly different than, “What should I do in a canoe that will be published widely as photographic evidence of my ignorance?”

I’ve spent a lifetime embracing shame and thus this seemed like yet another opportunity to learn how to outdoors better; how to encourage others to outdoors better.

It was also an exploration of the idea of risk and the sliding scale upon which it precariously moves.

We all take calculated risks on a regular basis. I am often in the back country trotting along with a pack full of bear bait, blissfully unaware of a trail of raisins I’ve left behind to attract grizzlies to my tent later that night. We ride bikes, climb mountains, forge rivers, jump out of planes and stuff our families in canoes.

The level of risk each of us is willing to take as an individual is arguably an individual right of passage. And yet …

Last week, I found myself running around a mountain with a friend. I had sprained my ankle early and was moving with the grace of a maimed armadillo. As night approached and another rain cloud with it, we had a conversation about risk that recognized something beyond our egos. If either of us took personal risk, we put the other at risk, too. And we could put Search and Rescue crews and first responders and every other generous heart that cared for us at risk.

Recognizing that it was not just about “us” but the community in which we thrive – the outdoor community – we opted to safely extract ourselves off the mountain early. We did not want to put anyone else at risk, either by setting a bad example or getting rescued off a mountain.

This is the wisdom that you dear readers have offered me again, and for this I am grateful: Our obligation is to recognize how our risks put others at risk and add that to our calculations. Our obligation is to be conscious guides to the newbies, the naïve, the ambitious.

So, thank you. To every one of you who took the time to write – who knows how many lives have been inadvertently saved.