The Pain of Centuries Past
The Turning Feral Devotional - Day 59
Day 59 - I was born in the wrong era. That’s a sentiment I’ve often felt and one that I hear others in my circle mention with frequency. Why? It’s likely based around nostalgia for a time when you could make a living through outdoor pursuits and stake a claim to any piece of land you were brave enough to venture to. Which is unlike today where a quarter acre of rural land can cost you upwards of a million dollars and fur prices are at an all time low.
The reality though? If I lived in a different century I would probably be dead. Yup, no bravado or ego here, and I am actually glad I live in the century that I do. Even with all of the problems and lost opportunities for outdoorsmen, our current century has offered one thing that folks of the past did not have – good healthcare. You see, in my daily readings as of late I’ve focused on a few different tales of western expansion from the perspective of fur trappers, lawmen, Indians, and general frontiersmen — and the one through line in every story? Death. A lot of death.
Across all people on the western frontier of the 1800’s death was everywhere. Broken ankle on the trail? Dead. Make a wrong turn and run into some Gros Ventre or Blackfeet Indians? Dead. Infected tooth? Dead. Small cut from a pine tree branch? Believe it or not… probably dead. Reading so many accounts of oft-benign causes of death in the old west reminds me of the fake Nicaraguan dictator, aka “the straight to jail” guy from Parks and Rec:
Taking off my rose colored glasses reading old stories, I think back to when I was a kid. With a crowded mouth of teeth I had to have several baby and adult teeth pulled. With limited to no insurance I had to endure the ripping and tearing of tooth removal with only a local anesthetic to numb the pain. If I were to have lived in the century I regularly fantasize about, I bet you could guess where I would be… dead.
What’s the point of all of this? History is written by the victors, or in the case of the old west – the survivors. That means survivor bias is impossible to avoid, which causes every story, no matter how horrific, to carry with it a bit of blind romanticism. That romanticism can cause folks in the modern age to pine for a time when life was more simple, a time that didn’t carry with it as many burdens and complications as today.
However, when you start to find yourself caught in the trap of longing for a different era, just think of the pain and consequence for action those people had to carry – it will snap you out of that longing quickly… and if it doesn’t, just take time to read this first-hand account of a woman going through a mastectomy for breast cancer without any anesthetic or modern comforts… It was a wild time filled with wild people who rode the line of death way closer than we do today!
http://wesclark.com/jw/mastectomy.html
Daily Prompt: Do you ever long to live in a different era? If you pull back from that fantasy, what would be the difficulties you would have to face if you actually lived then?:
Motivational Passage:
“Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road
Rewilding Action: As a follow on to the idea of living in the past, today’s action will be try writing. Whether it’s a journal, following the daily prompts here, or starting a larger writing project like a book, take some time to put pen to paper. Writing as a reflection, especially when undertaking self-sustainability actions, is a great way to collect your thoughts – no matter how sporadic they may seem – and to log point-in-time reactions. When you go back and read the writing later, you will be surprised at your thoughts and likely be impressed with how you evolve over time.