It was May 30th, the first day of Trail Skills College, and Zach and I wolfed down some pita chips with hummus, grabbed camping chairs, and walked in the dewy morning toward the yurt where we'd be taking our CPR and first aid classes. When you're in the wilderness, you always have the potential to be a first responder, whether you like it or not, so these classes were aimed at helping us do that with more competence.
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| Zach looking adorable in his down vest that he found at a thrift store! |
Little groups of people stood around chatting, and we shyly hung to one side until someone smiled at us and invited us into one of the circles. It had been a long time since I'd been in a group where everyone knew what the Pacific Crest Trail was, and had a good idea of what thru-hiking entailed. Everyone there had some sort of impressive wilderness experience: section-hiking a lot of the PCT, working for the Forest Service or the Bureau of Land Management, hiking a diy trail through Montana, being an avid backcountry equestrian or mountain bike rider. I felt right at home.
Two women, broad-shouldered and with a friendly sternness, ushered us into the yurt, along with twenty other people, to learn CPR first. Dummy head/torsos lay scattered about. The next two hours were a crash course in learning what to do if someone is unresponsive, whether in a wilderness situation or otherwise, and it covered a dizzying amount of information. After practicing compressions, my shoulders and hands ached with the effort.
Our teachers, both experienced in wilderness rescue, talked matter-of-factly about situations they'd been in where they helped do CPR on someone for four hours before finally giving up. They talked about good samaritan laws and safety procedures and what to do if you're alone and the person dies and you have to leave them on the trail. As they talked, a knot tightened in my stomach as I imagined what it would be like to find someone in the wilderness and know that I was the only thing standing between them and death. I have always respected first responders, but I began to have a more visceral appreciation of the incredible responsibility.
At the end of the class, each of us got a card certifying us for CPR (good for two years), and we were allowed a quick break before plunging into Wilderness First Aid.
If I thought CPR was a lot of information, Wilderness First Aid was like drinking from a fire hose. Personal safety, disaster assessment, patient examination, way too many acronyms, triage, hypo- and hyperthermia, bandaging and splinting, punctured lungs, vital signs, ticks and insects, epi pens, first responder priorities, transport, making an evacuation plan, dehydration, dismemberment, tourniquets, asthma attacks, impalement (I nearly lost my lunch during that section)… For the next six hours, I tried my best to stay afloat in the geyser of information, including the frequent hands-on practice.
The yurt grew hotter as the day progressed, and soon I was slick with sweat, chugging water in between trying to read a pulse, clear someone's spine for injuries, properly wrap and stabilize an ankle, or just keep track of all the different ailments.
Near the end of the class, we were split into groups and given a disaster scenario, with one of us acting as the victim. (We knew the event that had happened, but didn't know what the victim was suffering, and had to figure it out.)
In the first scenario, I volunteered to be the first responder— in this case, the first person to come upon someone who had fallen down a fifty-foot scree field. Our actor got down on the ground and began screaming and crying, and the instant I found myself "in the scene," so to speak, my mind went blank. Literally the only thing I could remember to do was check her spine and have someone take vitals. I didn't remember anything else I'd been taught. If it had been a real-life situation, her lung would've collapsed before I could figure out what was wrong. Fortunately, though, my "teammates" stepped in to help, and we finished the scenario successfully, mostly by other people offering suggestions and making up for me completely blanking out.
The next scenario, I was the victim— I had gotten kicked by a horse and now had a dislocated shoulder and a concussion, in addition to being diabetic and having skipped a meal that day. My team did an amazing job of figuring out my maladies and getting me into a stable position, despite me loudly screaming and crying the entire time (pausing only to eat the imaginary Snickers that the first responder offered me).
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| Clueless but certified! |
Once that exercise was done, it was time to get our certification (we all hummed "Pomp and Circumstance" as the teachers handed out certification cards), and then we dispersed.
As we headed back to the campground, I felt incredibly shaky. Even just thinking about that many scenarios in one day— and acting out a couple, both as a clueless first responder and as a person writhing in pain— had taken an emotional toll. I thought of my friends who are nurses, and my sister who is a flight attendant, with greater appreciation than ever before.
"I was so useless in my scenario," I told Zach as we walked.
"Knowing something is better than knowing nothing," he replied.
I felt a bit weepy all evening. I tried to review what I had learned, and thought about various emergency situations I'd found myself in throughout the years, thinking of how the responses I'd learned today would have been helpful.
I went to bed exhausted, grateful that the next two days of classes would be all about brush removal and drainage ditches. I had had enough talk of impalement to last me a good long while.
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