Focus and Change in Direction

Focus.

It has to do with seeing everything in the peripheral while at the same time concentrating on an objective. It has to do with taking everything into consideration in order to determine and maintain a desired … or perhaps necessary … course.

Being able to focus … and maintain focus … is one of the ingredients necessary in making it through survival situations that pose the potential to inflict harm or end physical life.

There’s more to it though.

This business of focusing has a definite application to life in general. Making the application, in whatever circumstance or arena, involves having enough personal fluidity to be able to accept presented conditions without being controlled by those presented conditions.

There are a couple of built in levels that come to mind when I consider focusing. There is a lot more to them than addressed here. Time and space allows for only a brief summary in this blog article.

The first is evaluation.

There is a lot to continually consider.

One day in a wilderness setting presents a multitude of variables … variables that will either assist in the venture or go hard on the adventurer. What, for some, appear as hardships can, for others, work as helpers provided there is a skills and knowledge frame of reference to work from that allows for personal fluidity and adaptability …  a frame of reference that also directs us away from or around potential hazards.

Without this team of skills and knowledge working for us, our evaluations are apt to lead us into dire straits that worsen our condition.

The natural world has its own inherent set of rules that govern it. Learning those rules and finding our role within the perimeters set by those rules is a challenging proposition for modern folk so far removed from them in their daily lives.

The second is discipline.

There is no success, unless it is accidental or Providential success, in anything on its own. The onus, when it comes right down to it, is on us as individuals.

Discipline is a matter of personal devotion to a course and a commitment of time to it … regardless of the course or course content … whether it is wilderness survival or piloting a space shuttle to the space station.

Acquiring a few tools and learning about a few skills are simple. Becoming proficient and efficient with those tools and skills is another matter altogether … one that involves a lot more from an individual than taking a class or watching videos.  

Getting a fire going, even for a novice in the woods, can be a relatively easy thing to do on a fair weather day. Today? With all the woodland resources soaking wet from these days of rain? With rain coming down by the buckets adding wet to wet and rivers of water running on flat ground? These conditions present a Bring Your A Game day that can be prepared for only by advanced preparations and discipline to dress rehearsals in miserable conditions.

A change in direction?

Changes?

Definitely.

I am not entirely certain of what all the changes will be now that I am officially retired from the hamster wheel. I am still slowly fleshing all that out in my mind but, at this point, it’s still a skeleton. There are definitely some serious interests to pursue that involve, in a fuller way, personally practicing skills that I know, learning more, and living more fully these woodcraft and self-reliance skills.  

Our next major steps are to get Shirli on the back side of her second knee replacement surgery that is coming up in a few weeks and then finish up this matter of relocating to Somewhere In The Woods, USA.

There are also woods waiting to be wandered, new trees waiting to be seen, creeks waiting to be fished, and camps waiting to be spiked.

Who knows?

There may even be a Go-Pro in the big picture.

Stay tuned. There's more to come!