Are You Experienced?

September 12, 2007

A report on the radio this morning about a missing hunter started me thinking (or at least doing what passes for thinking in my case). Why is it that the hunters that get lost always seem to be the most experienced ones? The stories always have a sound bite something like this:

The search resumes today for Bill “Grizzly” Thompson, who failed to show up at his scheduled pickup at a remote airfield Tuesday night. Thompson– an experienced outdoorsman with solo hunting trips on every continent to his credit– is well known in the hunting community for being dropped naked and without use of his arms into the Amazon rain forest with nothing but a roll of duct tape and half-empty pack of Dentine gum. Thompson emerged six months later with three wives and a new village bearing his name with structures built largely from the bones of the creatures he killed with his bare hands and impromptu vine-snares.

Why don’t the inexperienced outdoorsmen ever seem to get lost, requiring expensive search and rescue operations on the tax-payers dime? You never hear about Lyndon Milquetoast getting lost, who would best be described as “a bumbling, frail fool of a tourist who shouldn’t attempt the trip from his downtown walkup to the nearest bodega without a map, compass, GPS transmitter and an experienced guide.”

For that matter, almost everyone who makes the news appears to be an experienced enthusiast. The guy lost at sea learned to navigate with a sextant before he could talk and crossed the Atlantic on a raft made of empty milk jugs and a discarded bathroom door. The cyclist who got clipped was on a casual recreational ride after completing the Tour de France on a single-speed bike. Even the drunk driver turns out to have been a well-known regular at the local bar, implying that he probably drove under the influence dozens of times, becoming quite skilled at it before deciding one night to park his car in the waiting room of a local dentist’s office.

Am I the only one in the world who messes up, usually in grand and unmistakable ways, doing things that at best I am no good at and probably have no business attempting at all?

Tags: Psyche