I have always believed that survival instructors must remain students.
When I ran my own wilderness school, I committed to training every year—studying with Sigma 3, The Gray Bearded Green Beret, Alan Kay, and Nicole Apelian.
I wasn’t looking to escape society; I wanted to test my limits and refine my skills firsthand. If I was going to stand in front of a class and teach survival, I needed to experience it.
That philosophy eventually landed me in the Utah desert for a grueling two-week Hunter-Gatherer course with the Boulder Outdoor Survival School.
The course was not camping.
For three days we ate nothing.
During that time, we prepared for the trek ahead using only the kinds of tools and materials available to hunter-gatherers.
We percussion-knapped obsidian into cutting tools. We made cordage from dogbane. As a group, we processed a ram, dried the meat, gathered pine nuts, and made pemmican for the journey.
We turned gourds into water vessels and prepared to carry only what we could make, gather, or find.
On the third evening we finally had food after three days without it. Earlier that day, a ram had been harvested and processed.
That evening we sat down to a meal of ram and vegetables.
It wasn’t much by modern standards, but after three days without food, it felt like a feast.
The next morning we started the trek.
During the two weeks we drank from muddy water holes, gathered edible plants, trapped small game, caught trout by noodling, shared whatever food we found, and learned firsthand how valuable every calorie could become.
We ate buffalo berries when we found them. Purslane never lasted long once someone spotted it. Small game was shared among everyone. Nothing was wasted.
Midway into our trek, a flash flood came down from higher ground during the night. It had never rained where we were camped, but the stream we needed to cross had swollen dramatically.
We stripped down to our underwear, wrapped our belongings in the wool cloth we used for warmth at night, and held the bundles above our heads as we worked our way across.
The water was at my nose while I stood on my tiptoes feeling for footing. I remember thinking that anyone much shorter than me was having an even rougher time of it.
What I remember most isn’t the cold water.
It’s what happened when we reached the far bank.
The crossing point was in a quiet section of the stream where cattails grew thick along the edges. The water was covered with floating cattail fluff.
As we climbed out, the wet skin on our arms, legs, and faces became covered with it. By the time we reached dry ground, we were covered in cattail fluff from head to toe.
By the end of the course, I returned to civilization tired, dirty, and carrying twenty pounds less of me than I had brought.
When I finally returned home, I discovered my email account had been hacked.
The person who got into the account did not quietly copy information. They did not steal financial records. They did not patiently collect data and move on to more valuable targets.
Instead, they deleted information and sent obscene emails to people in my contact list.
Waiting in my inbox were replies from confused friends asking why I was sending pornography.
I spent the next several days cleaning up the mess.
What struck me then, and still strikes me now, is not that someone hacked my account.
People have always stolen things. Human beings have been stealing from one another since the beginning of recorded history.
What I never understood was why someone would choose to spend their time doing that.
During those same two weeks, I was learning how to find water, navigate unfamiliar terrain, preserve food, and live with fewer resources.
Someone else was spending their time learning how to break into accounts that did not belong to them.
Neither happened by accident.
Learning primitive skills took time. Whoever broke into my account also spent time learning a set of skills.
We had both invested effort.
We had simply chosen different directions.
We tend to think the divide between people is intelligence.
I don’t think it is.
Some of the smartest people I have ever met built businesses, taught classes, solved problems, or created things of value.
Some of the smartest people who ever lived were criminals.
Intelligence by itself doesn’t determine much.
Direction does.
The hacker who broke into my account may have been highly intelligent. He may have known far more about computers than I ever will.
If so, that only deepens the mystery.
Why spend talent that way?
If the goal was money, there were easier targets.
If the goal was information, there were quieter ways to get it.
If the goal was remaining undetected, sending obscene emails guaranteed discovery.
The attack was not efficient.
It was not rational in the way we usually think of rational behavior.
It seemed personal, even though it almost certainly wasn’t.
That is what makes it difficult to understand.
Perhaps the reward was not financial.
Perhaps it was the feeling of control.
Perhaps it was the satisfaction of entering a place where they did not belong.
Perhaps it was the simple pleasure of creating confusion.
I don’t know.
Thousands of years ago, a person could use skill to build traps for food or raid a neighboring camp.
Today a person can use skill to create software or compromise an email account.
The tools have changed.
Human nature has not.
I still teach.
I still learn.
I still try to understand why people do what they do.
The account was repaired.
The contacts were notified.
Life moved on.
What never left me was the question.
Not how they got in.
Why they wanted to.