USA Today July 27, 2000 "Survive This" by Laura Bly (Cover Story, Section D - Life) © USA Today www.usatoday.com

Rugged, real-life test of wilderness skills fosters growth, camaraderie
By Laura Bly, USA TODAY
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BOULDER, Utah - Forget barbecued rats and mock treasure hunts.Take it from our triumphant tribe of masochists, fresh from a week of groveling and grasping through nearly 40 miles of rugged high desert on foot.

You haven't suffered until you've slurped water from a slime-covered puddle teeming with tadpoles, puked your own bile in 95-degree heat and bedded down under a scraggly juniper tree in nothing but the clothes on your back.

You haven't grown unless you've trudged windswept mesas for hours, blisters oozing into sand-encrusted socks, or fished with your bare hands in the murky recesses of a riverbank.

And you can't call yourself a real survivor without spending a day and a night alone, subbing sagebrush leaves for toilet paper and a willow twig for a toothbrush - and paying $875 for the privilege.

The CBS hit show Survivor may be turning millions of Americans into wilderness voyeurs this summer, but the Boulder Outdoor Survival School (BOSS) has spent more than three decades transforming Robinson Crusoe fantasies into bruised, ant-bitten reality. It requires disciples to shed watches, cellphones, laptops and lattes for at least seven days of self-imposed deprivation in one of the country's emptiest, most remote stretches. And it teaches that in a world of dizzying technological change, less can indeed be more: in our case, an Army poncho, wool blanket, knife, compass and first-aid kit.

Our guided BOSS field course in and around Utah's Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument consists of four distinct passages, any of which makes the typical commercial adventure tour seem like a sojourn at the Ritz.

During a hellish orientation dubbed "impact," we'll spend at least 24 hours slogging through loose sand, clambering up steep slickrock and bushwhacking along stream beds, unencumbered by food, blankets or more water than we can gather in an enamel cup.

After two days of intense group travel and lessons on such basics as fire building, topographic map reading and shelter making, we'll practice what we've learned during a night alone under the stars. We'll chow down on dried beans and oatmeal with wooden spoons - which we've carved ourselves.
We'll then rejoin the group, sans instructors, for another miles-long ramble before bracing for what BOSS cryptically describes as a "final challenge."

"Our whole concept is about stretching your comfort zones. We walk a fine line between survival trip and survival," BOSS president Josh Bernstein warns us that first afternoon, just after staff members inspect our fanny packs to ensure we're not sneaking in such contraband as flashlights or Power Bars. Ditching early, he adds with a sadistic grin, is not a viable option: "We'll take you to the nearest road. But that could be 20 miles from the nearest paved road, which might get two cars a day."

Our intrepid clan of survivors - three women, six men - ranges in age from 34 to 48, with occupations as diverse as college teacher, truck driver and logistics manager. We've all taken a ribbing from incredulous friends and family, and we're all here to prove something - to them, and to ourselves.
'Here and now' important

Brian Conroy, 35-year-old managing partner for JP Morgan and an avid hiker and camper, is eager to strip away the civilized veneer of waterproof tents and high-loft sleeping bags in a challenging setting far from his New England haunts. Charles Gainer, 45-year-old CEO of Questcon, a software testing and quality assurance company in Greensboro, N.C., may be a backwoods neophyte. But he's determined to show his Gen Y employees that even a self-described "old guy" can journey to the edge and back. And Judy Bruin, 44-year-old mother of three, has traded the Chicago suburbs for the desert to discover what the woman behind the wife, daughter and soccer coach is really made of.

No one has more to learn, or more to fear, than I do. Most of my comrades have prepared for this ordeal with everything from step aerobics classes and 30-mile day hikes to using a push mower on a one-acre lawn. My fitness routine consists of strolling a few blocks to the nearest Starbucks

I may be a risk-taker who has jumped from an airplane, scuba-dived with great white sharks and nibbled grubs in Australia's Outback. But at 46, the prospect of collapsing in a sniveling heap under the sneers of strangers is more terrifying than Jaws.

So, too, is the need to remain anchored in what lead instructor Jill Christensen, a 25-year-old marvel in flowing calico skirt and handmade sandals, calls the "here and now."

In what seems a ploy to keep us off balance and uncertain - much as real-life wilderness survivors would be - Christensen and her two colleagues share as little information as possible. Such seemingly benign questions as "will we make it to camp before dark?" are greeted with enigmatic smiles and a maddening "you'll find out."

Alliance of all
But just as ceding control proves easier than I'd feared, so does admitting weakness, accepting help and reaching higher than any of us had imagined.
Instead of forming alliances and scheming to vote one another off the island (take note, CBS survivors), our ragtag band weaves a snug cocoon of camaraderie.

When I stagger in heat-addled exhaustion on a vertical rock ledge a few inches wide, 37-year-old Savannah college teacher J.C. Andersen steps in to steady my arm and shoulder my pack. When 40-year-old Ian Petty vomits copious quantities of green bile the second afternoon out, the rest of us smile encouragingly, and incredulously, as the wiry Scotsman pumps a defiant fist and shouts, "I'm not dead yet!" And when the group runs uncomfortably low on water after a wrong turn the day of our instructorless hike, we gather in the cool recess of a sandstone cave to pool our meager, bug-infested supply.

Our last evening in the desert, more than 12 hours after lacing up our boots that morning, we stumble to one of the few signs of civilization we've seen all week: an old corral, flanked by the desiccated remains of a cow that we joke could have been us. Our instructors are waiting with a gas can of water, an ominous offering of hot pasta and instructions for our final challenge
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We'll wait until dark, dump our packs and head toward Boulder along Highway 12, a two-lane ribbon of asphalt that's been called one of the most scenic in America. It could be 10 miles. Maybe 20. All we know is that we should try to get where we're going by sunrise.

A nearly full moon turns the buttes and mesas into snowdrifts as we shuffle homeward. We dream of cold beer and soft sheets, of mint toothpaste and steam-filled showers.

But we dream, too, of the Robert Service poem Jill had sung to us as the sun crawled below the horizon hours earlier. We hear its refrain as we totter into camp sometime before dawn: "There's a whisper on the night-wind, there's a star agleam to guide us, and the Wild is calling, calling . . let us go."