Cry of the Wild

I never cried in the wild,yet .The last time I cried was several hours after I found a dead baby in a house. When I got home the adrenaline was spent and I broke down.

My son is he same way. He got lost and frightened at a football game. Scared him . When he got home he started bawling.He kept repeating "I dont know why I m crying"
 
The first hunt after my father passed away, walking into my tree stand I shed some thankful tears for having such an outstanding father.
 
I have not really admitted this before, in public anyway, but I had a complete breakdown on one of my solo trips while dealing with lyme disease and spotted fever. I was in the army for eight years, loved air assault, was an active rock climber, etc... Then, on the very fist day of my dream job which I lost soon after for time missed, one of the ticks I got gave me both lyme and rocky mtn spotted fever. I didn't get rid of it with the first round of doxy and ended up in the hospital for a week with a fever that reached 104. After I was released I was on heavy IV antibiotics at home for three months and was nearly bed ridden the whole time. I don't know how many days I cried when no one was around because I couldn't make it down the hall to get a drink of water without help. I lost forty pounds from muscle atrophy. As I recovered I decided that nothing else in my life mattered if I couldn't get out in the wild and do the things I loved. It was my first solo trip, about six months after treatment, and I decided to just take an easy weekend hike in nice weather with a light pack and my hammock. I was only going four miles on the first day and planned to be there by noon to hang out for the day. I started at 7am and by dusk (apx 7:30pm) I still was not there. I used to do 150 mile hikes in 9 days on the App Trail. This time, I had pushed myself to hard and couldn't even make the four mile hike in 12 hours. I sat down to rest but passed out and was found shortly after by some teenage hikers. I convinced them that I had fallen asleep and when they were out of sight I just broke. I don't know if I have ever cried that hard before in my life. I grew up with the normal "tough guy" upbringing that is common with many outdoors people, and had that heavily reinforced by two terms in the army. When I found myself pushing everything my body had and then being passed by kids on what they saw as an easy hike it was just more than I could handle. I never did make it to the camp area where I intended to put my hammock. I set it up right there and stayed the night. The next day I couldn't even make it back without calling my wife on the cellphone to come help me get back to the parking lot. It was a humiliating and humbling experience and after I got home it was three days before I was able to get out of bed without assistance. That was the hardest ordeal I have ever been faced with. The only way that I made it was the incredible support I got from family and friends.
 
I have never cried in the wild...yet. I guess I have never faced a situation to bring that level of emotion up. My son cried the first time he went to boy scout camp without me. I guess we all do that our first time away from home by ourselves.

Speaking of my son, I cried when he was born. There was so much emotion for me, I couldn't hold it back.

I cried when I took both of our cats to be put down.

Glenn
 
Magnussen said:
How many of you have cried in the wild for one reason or another. Whether you were choking back the tears or wailing like Tammy Faye Baker... what triggered it and how did you deal with the situation?

I have had it happen several times... from stress, excitement/anticipation, depression and happiness. Many other educated outdoorsmen have told me the same thing. I think it is one of those things that can be chalked up to experience. When you are pushing boundries and exapanding your comfort zone, things can get emotional. I knew a competion fighter who cried during every match. It was simply how his body coped with stress.

Or is everybody gonna play the tough guy?

Rick
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I can't remember ever crying in the wild. But, i have gotten adrenaline rushes and the shakes before. I have also found myself in a slight sense of hypervigilance (which was almost euphoric, everything seems to get this weird halo and even the night is a little easier to see in.).
Crying-- of that kind, anyway -- is a coping mechanism, kind of like denial. It results from the stress (note there are two types of stress: eustress (positive) and distress(negative).), what you're calling "emotional". It's your brain's way of calming itself down and taking a break from the pressure instead of just shutting down and sending you into a panic; or going haywire and causing you to faint from the overactivity. Every new experience puts you under stress, and very few things put you under more stress than "testing your limits" and "expanding your boundaries." For the most part though, controlled expansion of awareness and experience is "good" stress.

I got sad once though, when I saw a stump of tree that would have been so big that you couldn't wrap your arms around it. It had been cut for logging and that old tree had probably seen more shit than three generations of humans. I'm not a hippy tree hugger, but for some reason that bugged me.
 
I have a few times.....and I adhere to the same "tough guy code" I think pretty much all guys here have. Father grew up on a farm and is retired army now. The rule was "guys dont cry" you all heard it before. Whats crazy is I never have cried from the things you'd expect. I have nearly cuz my foot off, put a piece of glass through my hand, been stung over 150 times by yellow jackets, broken my arm blah blah you get it....never cried. They hurt like hell but didnt cry.

A few years ago (I posted this somewhere on the forums) I almost drowned. I rolled my kayak over on flat water and my father and girl at the time were down river and well no one was around. My tab on my sprayskirt was tucked underneath and due to my height I couldnt jam my knee's against it and push out of it. I partially blacked out and ended up pealing at the sides and getting it out. I managed to surface and kind of breath (water was in my lungs) and drug my kayak to shore. Funny thing was no one understood, not my dad or girl or mom.....no one understood that I was almost dead. I went back there a few days later and sat on the bank and looked out over the water and just broke. I couldnt help it, I still get nightmares, I get the shakes when I get in a kayak even without a sprayskirt...havent got into one with a sprayskirt since. Probably not the response the OP was looking for but hey it happened in the wild.

I also cried last fall when I went hunting on the first day of Buck season in PA without my grandfather who had passed earlier that year. He always went with me and walked me to my stand and then to his. That walk without him and then sitting in my stand knowing he wasnt up the hill from me...really choked me up. I didnt cry at his funeral or when I heard the news or at all until then. Funny how things like that can make you cry.
 
This is exacltly what I was looking for guys, thanks. Lotsa folks sharing tough memories, here. I appreciate it.

Rick
 
I hear what you guys are saying and is cool but if you watched the short lived series about Ed wardle "alone in the wild" He said something inside him welled up and did not understand why he was crying..,yet people went off on him calling him names ? he said he missed people,maybe stress relief ? terrorfied of Bear yet alone in the yukon ?
sorry to side track... to me seems the same emotion yet different reasoning
 
texastonydobbs said:
I hear what you guys are saying and is cool but if you watched the short lived series about Ed wardle "alone in the wild" He said something inside him welled up and did not understand why he was crying..,yet people went off on him calling him names ? he said he missed people,maybe stress relief ? terrorfied of Bear yet alone in the yukon ?
sorry to side track... to me seems the same emotion yet different reasoning
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This is what prompted me to make this thread, TTD:thumbup: I recently watched the whole series, again.
 
I really liked that series, have for quite a while. I think that his break downs allowed him to function when he was faced with stressors that were way beyond what he had anticipated. We can all say how bad ass we would be on our own but how many people have gone three months with no contact at all and no way to get help quickly if an emergency arose. I know I haven't.
 
I have not had the experience of shedding tears in the wilds. I would welcome it, though I might not welcome the experience which spawned them.

When I cry, it is more about the emotional wilderness, the space between people, the chasm between our dream and our outcomes.

An example...



Cancer

How do you explain the cancer that eats at your soul?

How do you explain that you fear that it will kill you?

How do you tell your friends, your loved ones, that it laughs at their love, and pulses malignly no matter how tightly they hold you?

How do you relate, that even on the brightest days, the best, most wonderful days of your life, it mutters a reality so dark, that you think you will choke?

How can you relate, that some days you wish tomorrow wouldn't come?

Can they understand the shame you feel, hiding your fears, for fear that their compassion will only open the wound deeper?

And so you sit, in your chair, on the edge of your bed, those that love you just inches away, but in those inches, a yawning gulf, a chasm without measure.

And when you cry, you cry silently, holding your breath, until it subsides, and you can go back to holding on to the thin thread of hope that someday you will experience a miracle, a day without the gnawing feeling that this is as good as it gets.



Kind Regards,
Marion
 
I cried before shooting our Irish Setter who had a stroke the day before. I grew up in a not so nice situation and the woods were my getaway so I'm sure that I've cried in the woods more times than I can remember.

My most common crying woods related was when I broke both of my legs and spent 6 months wheelchair bound. You buggers posted all of these great pictures and adventures and I couldn't even leave the house under my own control. So Yah I cried about the woods even more than I did in the woods. I was crying everyday anyways out of frustration, anger, self blame anyways- although the pictures made my resolve to get out there again even stronger and made me appreciate my first walk in the woods even more. I didn't cry then, nor do I cry about danger/stress- those I can deal with calmly and cooly, even deaths don't make me cry much, but getting over being disabled I feel you have to.
 
Magnussen said:
Never pick a fight with an old man, if he's too tired to fight, he'll just kill you.:thumbup:
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Hmmm. You display a disturbingly accurate understanding of our modus operandi.:grumpy:

We will remember.

At least ... this week.:o
 
Remind me of old Japanese comic illustlated by Osamu Tezuka,
last scene of chapter Phoenix in Hi no Tori (Phoenix) series.

In my case, not at woods but deep night sky after copying medical articles,
feel like to be called from stars in comparison to dying people...
 
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