If you're thinking of hiking, or camping, or just going outside...

I've been completely consumed with the outdoors these days. It all began when I stumbled upon this website dedicated to chronicling the ghost towns of Texas. And then from there, it just took off. I went on to find a site of a couple that had become so enamored with the idea of ghost towns, that they traveled the west, from north to south to find and document each one. After seeing those photos, I was sold. I was determined to take a road trip. Since this road trip was to encompass as much ghostly areas possible, that meant traveling through many a dead zone. So I purchased survival books and started doing some research.

Although we can't make the epic road trip quite yet, a few of my friends and I have instead opted for taking a shorter and more local camping, hiking, and canoing trip. In any case, I am still researching. And I'm still obsessed with bears. As usual, this lands me some place on Wikipedia's site, particularly a curious page titled "Deaths Due to Animal Attacks." (click title to go to page). After perusing this list and coming to the conclusion that crossing paths with any wild animal remotely related to a cat would be my worst nightmare, I'm led to a list of bear attacks. I'll spare you all of the things I read from that list (aside from observing that the majority of fatalities seemed to be of women being dragged out of tents by bears—is it that they might have had some sort of fragrant item with them?) Here, I stumble on a man by the name of Hugh Glass. Glass was apparently a survivor of a terrible bear attack in 1823. Assuming it is factual, his story is quite a hardcore survivalist one. And I'm a huge fan of survivalist stories. Especially apocalyptic style, but that's for another time.