Nature in the City

Even in the city there are plenty of ways to be close to nature. As with most everything else in life, you just need to get up off your lazy butt and just do it! Yesterday Amie and I went on our normal walk. We left the house here on 28th & Jefferson Street and headed towards The Boise Greenbelt. On this short, probably 2-3 mile walk, we pass a multitude of natural goodies. 2 lakes, 2 Rivers, 2 Enormous Bald Eagles, a Blue Heron, hundreds of Crows and black birds, finches, woodpeckers, ducks, loons, seagulls, and other water fowel. It really is a solice for me living in the city to be able to have something like this so close to where I am. Even though nature may seem far away, all I need to do is start walking and I'm in the middle of Nature, right here in the city.

The tools of the trade 

S.E.R.E in Idaho

Lying on the cold desert floor I could hear the sound of the ATV getting louder and closer. I pressed my body closer into the dirt and pulled my ruck closer to my head. Myself and my team had been traveling over flat open ground with little cover aside from a few sparse sagebrushes and some yellow grass, when all of a sudden the throaty roar of one of the ATVs that had pursuing us the entire night roared to life a little ways away. The darkness revealed nothing in any direction and neither did my NVGs, only the sound, that was steadily getting louder.....and nearer. Hiding until it was gone was our only option. I pressed flat onto the ground and crawled next to a tiny sage brush, the biggest one with in any reasonable distance. Not daring to move a muscle in the darkness to attract any attention I barely breathed, knowing our chances of evading detection where slim already. Tdup, tdup, tdup, TDup, TdUp, TDuP, TDUP, the ATV was very close now. Then it shut off. Heart pounding, breathing faster I wondered if it might be giving away my position. Silence for several minutes that felt like hours then the ATV started back up and drove away. After the sound of its passing faded away I whispered "Lets go" and started moving away in a hunched of position to below the ridgeline and better cover. As the team started to move a bright light shined on us and a voice yelled out "FREEZE!!".
"You are all now Prisoners of War"
Sounds like a story you would hear from a Vietnam vet, downed aircrew member behind enemy lines or a Special Forces operator, but here it was happening to me here in good ol' Idaho. No it was not some wierd milita group or something, it was simply S.E.R.E training or Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape. What is S.E.R.E you might ask well it is training that aircrew members and selected other people go through to teach them to survive out in the wild, evade capture by the enemy, resist interrogation, and escape if possible. Even though I was going through the training for less than pleasant reasons it was still a great learning experience and best of all it took place in beautiful Idaho. When I was creeping through a sage valley, skirting a ridgeline or hiding underneath a bush I could look up into the clear night sky and see thousands of stars and through the NVGs see shooting stars light up the night sky. Like one of my instructors said "Well my job requires a lot of work, many hours and discipline, but look at my office" as he gestured to the terrain with the sun setting in the distance. That is my story and I'm sticking to it.