Deep Survival By Laurence Gonzales
#4 The Dangers of the Vacation Mindset
The unconscious conclusion we draw is that our little corner of the world is safe. Our culture of plenty keeps us permanently in a vacation state of mind.
Illustration by Dan Page
Last summer I traveled to the Outer Banks in North Carolina. The house I rented was on the dunes above the beach, and I could sit and write and listen to the surf thundering beneath my window as the constant wind blew the tops off the waves. Out on the deck I’d watch the pelicans, big and prehistoric-looking, wheel around their circuit from south to north and back again. In the angled light of afternoon, pods of dolphins leapt and dove, and children played in the waves while I fretted about rip currents carrying them out to sea.
The Vacation State of Mind struck home with me. I used to haul food over the mountains of Colorado and saw many instances of people who tended to ignore the perils of driving those mountain passes, including myself. Every spring, wreckers pull wrecked cars out of those hills by drivers who fail to take even the simplest winter precautions. On one early spring morning my truck broke down on Monarch pass and a spring blizzard set in and, thanks to duct tape and a pair of pliers, I managed to get off the pass with nothing but minor frostbite. Thanks to my Vacation State of Mind, I pulled down the barriar the rangers had put up at the bottom of the pass and went on up. I think the VSofM lends itself to a certain amount of stupidity.
Posted by: Robert J Freemyer | May 20, 2008 at 10:45 AM