Obstacles in Outdoor Activities
You are going to die! Whether it is from natural causes, a supernatural catastrophe, or from your own stupidity and carelessness, you will die one day. Taking part in outdoor activities such as hunting, fishing, kayaking, and hiking all increase your odds of encountering death before natural causes takes its course of killing you. Although recreational activities can kill you, they are also loads of fun and can give you an adrenaline rush like nothing else. In 2005 (the most recent data available according to www.getoutzine.com and in the United States) 3,582 deaths were caused by drowning, 699 by hypothermia, 5.2 by snake bites (the average from 1991-2001) 2 by bear attacks, and 99 by hunting accidents (statistics from 2002, www.nssf.org). Personally, I have encountered dangerous situations which could have ended in death but with quick thinking and making smart decisions I overcame those situations. On January 1, 2006 my dad and I went on a hunting trip which had a quick change of events, a few years later I fell and hit my head on a rock while hiking, a year after that my mom flipped her kayak on some rapids, and just this past summer I got caught in the middle of a lightning storm while scalloping with my dad and brother two miles from the shoreline. These are just a few of the several life threatening situations I have been in. There are many things in nature that can kill you, and without making a smart, quick decision in these situations the outcome can change drastically from the expected making one realize how fragile human life really is. January 1, 2006 is a day that I will remember for the rest of my life. On that day, my dad and I went on a hunting/camping trip that turned from being a pleasant trip to an adrenaline filled experience. It all started on a sunny winter day when we decided to go to our hunting spot on Escambia River and campout overnight. We checked the news and they claimed twenty percent chance of storms the following morning, which twenty percent chance is a daily occurrence in Florida, so we loaded up the truck and boat with all of our gear and headed to the boat ramp. Once we got to the boat ramp, we launched the boat and headed upriver about a mile to the spot where we hunt. Around three o'clock in the afternoon we set up camp before we left for the afternoon hunt. At four, we grabbed our guns and started walking through the woods and found a spot to sit on a fallen log overlooking a water hole that had many deer tracks around it. After about an hour of sitting there we heard thunder off in the distance and in a matter of minutes it started to pour. We made a dash back to camp through the woods in the pouring rain and “dodging” lightning strikes, two minutes later we made it to the tent. The temperature was about forty degrees Fahrenheit and we were soaking wet so we looked forward to being able to crawl into our sleeping bags to warm up. Come to find out, our tent had a leak in it and all of our extra clothes and sleeping bags were drenched when we returned so there was nothing we could do to warm up. After the rain slacked off we tried to find some dry wood to start a fire, which we did and were able to warm up by the fire. Then we walked down to the boat and discovered it had filled with water and the stern was completely underwater. Luckily, we had pulled it up further on the bank or it would have been fifteen feet underwater on the river bottom. After a few minutes of pondering on what to do, we took an M.R.E. bag and picked the back end of the boat out of the water by standing on the bow so we could bail the water out. It took us about thirty minutes to get most of the water out and then it started to rain again. So, we took shelter in the leaking tent until it slacked off and decided to leave the safety of the campsite to make it back to the boat ramp and go home. We left the tent where it stood, loaded everything into the boat, cranked it up and