Personal Survival Checklist

You Must Bring

• Your ticket or photo ID and confirmation number for Will Call pickup
• 1.5 gallons of water per person per day
• A reusable water bottle
• Food & beverages
• An extensive first-aid kit
• Sunscreen/sunblock & sunglasses
• Warm clothing
• Particle/dust mask
• Goggles to protect eyes during dust storms
• Rope or tie-down straps
• Hand sanitizer (60% or more alcohol content)
• Garbage and recycling bags, and tools to clean up your camp
• Duct tape — you’ll find a need for it, guaranteed
• Flashlights and spare batteries (headlamps are useful)
• Lights for your bike and your person
• Rain gear + footwear
• A good camp tent or other shelter and warm sleeping bags and bedding
• Portable ashtrays if you smoke (e.g. mint tin that closes securely)
• Prescriptions (in their original containers), contact lens supplies (disposables work great), and anything else you need to maintain your health in a remote area with no services
• Fire extinguishers
• A battery-powered AM/FM radio to listen to BMIR radio and stay informed
• Common sense, an open mind, a sense of humor and a positive attitude

“We need the tonic of wildness…At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.”

― Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Or, Life in the Woods

“We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate. We travel to bring what little we can, in our ignorance and knowledge, to those parts of the globe whose riches are differently dispersed. And we travel, in essence, to become young fools again- to slow time down and get taken in and fall in love once more.”

Pico Iyer

“Champagne arrived in flûtes on trays, and we emptied them with gladness in our hearts… for when feasts are laid and classical music is played, where champagne is drunk once the sun has sunk and the season of summer is alive in spicy bloom, and beautiful women fill the room, and are generous with laughter and smiles… these things fill men’s hearts with joy and remind one that life’s bounty is not always fleeting but can be captured, and enjoyed. It is in writing about this scene that I relive this night in my soul.”

― Roman Payne

The surprising joy of making new old friends

When Covid started, a friend of mine started a weekly (Friday evening at 6:00 PM) Zoom meeting with about 6 families who knew each other to different degrees. We all ate dinner at our homes of course. Our “leader “built a sort of structure with a series of questions that we all took turns answering. One standard question is “tell us about something/s that was a wow experience, or very meaningful–which always leads to interesting tangents. About 2 years ago, as COVID would down, we still do once a month–always on Friday nights. We have learned so much about each other!