Survival of the fittest

I wasn't feeling too good today. Lack of sleep and a pinched nerve (I think) had led to a morning of pain and much discomfort. I took a couple of Ibuprofen and tried to go back to sleep. I managed to get a couple of hours but just couldn't sleep much more beyond the noon hour which was a miracle by any means to begin with. As I awoke the pain in the back of my neck and upper back really stung but I managed to get myself into the kitchen to make a coffee and try to wake up completely.

As groggy as I was, I sat down to read my emails and that in itself was a task because I had to squint. Somehow in Jason's body the eye muscles are connected to whatever is hooked up in the back and neck, for when I squinted to read a couple of messages I felt sick and I had sharp kicks of pain go through my neck.

Meanwhile, to take my mind off things, I thought about what I have done in the past. I mean, the places I have been and the conditions at the time. I was trying to make myself feel better, comparing the "poor conditions" in the field compared to being in the comfort of my own home. Yeah, even being in my own home I still felt like crap. I have a good bed, good pillows, everything was "typically" good. And there we have the jokers who made a few cracks about it all just being the result of a hangover from SuperBowl but all kidding aside, I was genuinely worried about my well being because it's not like me to be taken under the weather by something as simple as muscle pain. I tell you, it was a very quick decision made in the morning to just give up and call into work today because of the pain that I was in.

Well here we are. It's 11:03pm EST and it's almost bedtime. I feel better, but not "sparkling". I can move about and feel a little more relaxed but I still get stabs of pain in my neck and shoulders. As in the past, this will surely disappear. I can only hope.....but it's that sort of wishful thinking that also draws my attention to common illnesses and pain. As humans, we can recognize when we are in pain. We do stuff to fix the problem. A lot of it does not actually correct the problem, it just masks it. Why am I even mentioning this? Well, perhaps a little far fetched but I think we need to look at what animals do when they are sick. They hide. They hunker down. They seem to almost "hibernate" and take refuge from the world and in doing so they come out surviving their malady with minimal disruption. By way of instinct, an animal does what we would do if we did not feel well. We would disappear from the public, relax and get better, then re-emerge and continue life as we know it.

I don't need to tell you where this conversation is going but if you put 2 + 2 together, you might just realize that illness is in the eye of the beholder. If you feel that you can't just make it work you stay held back at your place, making sure that you are getting better. Something to think about next time your in the field. There are no hospitals, pharmacies, doctors, etc. It's just you and the woods. Our big hairy friend knows this all too well. It will be reserved and cautious with it's movements for fear that injury could really take it's toll. Any injury - could lead up to the demise of even the most formidable creature, including Sasquatch. We look at smallpox - an invisible enemy that literally wiped out a nation. We cured it but it took us by surprise. Where we seem so strong in some areas we remain considerably weaker in others. This is what kills us. This is what "turns over" a species. It's a sad way to put things but in the end, it's just life.

And so no doubt it might be one of the reasons why it has been to hard to gain proof & evidence of it's existence. Perhaps we killed it or have come close, simply by the viral and bacterial plagues that we are so used to. Perhaps it is like the North American Indian who lost several thousand to disease and viruses that we introduced unintentionally. We don't know, but in the end, it comes down to the same thing. Survival of the fittest.

J