'Deep Survival' and that Pesky Little Amygdala

Several weeks ago, I visited a local bookstore that graciously features some of my own books (on their ‘local writer’ shelf). Not that anyone likely cares, that store is known as ‘Crawfords’ Books’ and it has been a small but notable hole-in-the-wall feature of this local Sacramento neighborhood I live in for decades.

Crawfords was formerly owned by a frusty, older couple whose collective sense of humor and good-natured jollity would probably fit easily into a sow bug’s discarded carapace, with room to spare. The new owners, by contrast, are a marked improvement over old Mr. & Mrs. Whatever, but aside from their generous embrace of my works, they have a lively intellectual take on life that is clearly reflected in the range of fascinating books (both new and used) they offer.

As a terminally afflicted bibliophile, I enter just about any book store with the same forlorn spirit that Dante’s visitors to Hades had (‘Lasciate ogni Speranza, voi ch’entrate’), since for me entering a book store is not dissimilar to what a dope addict (excuse me: the PC term is now substance, I am reminded) must feel upon inadvertently bumping into the local hood’s horse connection. It’s not, incidentally, a feeling of dread, but a feeling of being in the power of forces beyond your reckoning that is so formidable.

To illustrate, when I enter just about any book store, my friends usually have to end up sending in a search & rescue team to extract me after a certain period of time. Bookstores are a form of virtual peyote to me and yes, I did try some way-back-when in Berkeley days, thankew furry moosh.

At any rate, whenever I enter Crawford’s, I characteristically end up departing said premises with several hundred dollars’ worth of books. No wonder they cheerfully display my own immortal tomes in there! Over the past several years I’ve probably bought the equivalent of an entire new wing on their store. They don’t quite break out the red carpet and bubbly when they see me headed into the place, credit card in hand, but you get the idea.

Very recently, on one such search & deploy excursion to Crawfords’ I was searching through the science & physical universe section when I stumbled quite by accident on a book whose title was ‘DEEP SURVIVAL: Who Lives, Who Dies and Why’. On the cover, an alpinista is shown standing on a perilously small pinnacle of rock, linked solely by a 12mm Perlon rope. He is shown facing away, staring into a void that would likely make Sarte (or perhaps Nietzsche) shudder with foreboding.

Since I am (and have been) a lifelong mountaineer of the most untalented yet enthusiastic kind, I was immediately drawn to this book. The author’s name, Laurence Gonzales, didn’t immediately ring a Tibetan wind chime for me, but I later learned that he is a distinguished contributing editor for the National Geographic Magazine and a writer who has penned notable pieces for a number of national magazines of high caliber content (Atlantic, Harper’s, etc.).

‘Deep Survival’, eh? Among my many predilections is an intellectual interest in the discipline of survival. That is to say, however, I’m not one of those unfortunate ‘preppers’ we all hear about, those doomsday-fearing-preparers for Armageddon, but someone who is nonetheless interested in the very human instinct for survival of the self amidst otherwise extremely daunting circumstances, and when faced by what would otherwise be a forced choice between death and life.

In fact, in my younger days I took quite an interest in basic wilderness survival techniques. This started when I was an Audible Boy Bird Watcher (apologies to 50s cartoonist Walt Kelly, creator of ‘Pogo’) and Boy Sprout (no relation to the vegetable). Back in those days, I kept a personal survival kit on hand whenever I was off on a trip into the wilderness, based upon the most astute estimates of what would successfully allow a boy to survive (compiled by experienced wilderness guides). My list of such things was usually so hopelessly all-encompassing that fully two-thirds of my pack would contain things that would only be needed or useful during a cosmic-ray storm on the moon.

I was widely renown for struggling to reach mountain summits so overburdened with this emergency flotsam and jetsam that I had a well-deserved reputation for being a walking, talking virtual quartermaster of material redundancy and superfluity. My fellow campers knew that no matter what they needed, way out there in the remote & god-forsaken wilderness, chances are that good old Kaliki would have it squirreled away somewhere in his fulsome pack.

Somewhat later, I also developed a reputation for being an absolute safety-wonk, someone who wouldn’t even take a carefully calculated risk unless several pages of mathematical formulations had conclusively demonstrated that the risk factor in reference was reduced to a factor of 1-in-ten-thousand or less (obviously, I’ve never been a gambler).

While most boys in my post-pubescent peer group were honing their physical agility and psycho-neural motor systems by attempting seemingly impossible and extremely dangerous feats (all a normal part of growing up and developing one’s senses), I preferred to stay back from all the experiential action, happily content to predict where (and with whom) the next catastrophic incident involving my buddies would take place. Think of me as a sort of precursor-Sheldon-Cooper, if that helps to visualize this.

In other words, I was fascinated with the concept of survival but I usually kept myself well away from any actual test of my physical and/or intellectual capabilities in that arena of actual life experience.

Thus, began a continuing obsession with safety that marks me well-off from many even today. To say I was and am averse to taking risks is akin to observing that the Roman Catholic Pimp is a Holy Man.

Accordingly, it was that when I spotted Gonzales’ book ‘Deep Survival’, I was immediately attracted, slapping it down on the stack of books I would walk out of Crawfords’ laden with.

Once home, later that day, I put the book in my ‘read soon’ stack and promptly forgot about it when I guiltily eyed a voluminous biography of Celine I had acquired a month ago and had continued putting off reading (it was sitting there, immediately adjacent to a 1981 three-volume set of Proust’s ‘Remembrance of…, etc.’ that has sat untouched for similar reasons).

Finally, one morning when the mood for something different hit me (along with the green tea’s caffeine jolt), my eyes again fell upon this book. Plucking it off the shelf, I down-sat myself, adjusted my 1.5+ refractive cheaters and began to read it.

Revelation! It wasn’t about anything as simple as survival kit lists or preparations for wilderness survival at all, but a wickedly intelligent and insightful philosophical exploration of what personal traits and assets differentiate those who defy death and survive the most trying circumstances from those who do not.

As such, deep survival is not about the contents of survival kits, wilderness experience, or even task-specific survival training but rather it is an extremely perceptive and intelligent inquiry into what experiential human survival is all about.

The author is himself quite an nuanced individual, having spent a lifetime seeking that fine, razor’s edge of risk-management that typifies the successful survivor. As a pilot (both an ex-fighter pilot and civilian ATP ticket holder…that last translates to airline Captain for most of you) adventurer and outdoors man, Lawrence Gonzales is also a superb writer and someone who not only has personally connected with the vast undercurrents of chance, fate, capability and sheer luck, but who can smoothly analyse and write about all of the foregoing in a manner that makes perfect sense to the likes of you and I.

Essentially what Gonzales characterises as the ‘survivor mind-set’ is taken right from the heart of Zen Buddhism…that is, the state of ‘being there’, or existing squarely and fully within the present moment. Using selections from the ancient Tao te Ching, as well as actual case examples of classic survivor experiences, Gonzales tells us, in addition to being there completely in both spirit and mind, one must embrace the unpredictability of what we call ‘life’, cast out any and all preconceived notions, and face whatever fate throws at us with an open and unfettered mind. Gonzales calls it by the same term Zen sensei do in describing the purpose of their koans: ‘Beginner’s mind’.

A beginner is open to all possibilities, since he has yet to build the elaborate structures of experience that so often close off possibilities as well as open them. Gonzales likens this to the mind of a child and in fact cites from the documentation that small children are FAR more likely to survive a catastrophic disaster (such as an aircraft crash in the remote, high mountains) than both older children and adults…simply because they do not yet know that anything they face is impossible (the way an experienced and seasoned individual would). Therefore, they are ever in the present moment when confronted by sorely trying circumstances and therefore again their chances of surviving what might otherwise kill a seasoned survivalist are exponentially enhanced.

Some of the manifestations Gonzales cited resonated deeply with me as I was going through his book. Among them are examples of what are commonly call ‘sick humor’. This instantly took me back to the heart surgery suites I routinely worked in, some 20 years ago. During the course of dangerously complex cardiac invasive procedures, in which a patient could ‘go out’ and expire in a single heartbeat, the stresses and pressures of dealing with these possibilities on a recurrent, daily basis could be devastating.

One of the ways we dealt with this intense, at times literally crushing stress, was by making light of things as we worked. Thus, breezy discussions of how one of the team member’s maladjusted carburetor on his car could go on throughout such a procedure…a seemingly a contradictory attitude to any casual observers of the scene. Or joking aspersions about someone’s sex-life, or dating success, or any one of a number of irreverent topics could hold sway among us as we worked to save a patient’s life.

Those viewing such a procedure (as VIP guests, perhaps), unfamiliar with the mechanism underlying this sort of jocularity would often comment, properly shocked by the seeming irresponsible air permeating the theatre’s atmosphere, that such trivial discussion had no place in the middle of a stressful and complicated, life & death cardiac procedure.

After the procedure had been completed these sensitive souls were commonly taken aside by the chief surgeon performing the procedure, who then explained what stress-relief and lowering inherent tension levels with such banter was all about.

Sick humor (for that is what it amounts to) is a deliberate device employed by not just heart surgery teams but by those engaged in nearly ALL dangerous and potentially risky activities for that specific purpose: to allow the impossibly risky possibilities to be dealt with without destructively stressing-out all who were involved in them.

Joking around during cardiac procedures doesn’t mean that we were not alert and prepared for just about any eventuality. Quite the contrary. We were all of us always about 10 beats ahead of the given ‘real-time’ moment, always several skips ahead of the game and uniformly poised to react within a mere fraction of a second, should anything not go as anticipated. The pressures inherent in all such undertakings can, as already mentioned, be literally crushing; therefore, they are pro-actively neautralised in this manner…rude jokes, scurrilous remarks, off-color humor and what would otherwise seem to be complete irreverence for whatever grave activity was otherwise being dealt with at the specific moment.

Gonzales references what he calls fighter pilot cool, the seeming appearance of pilots having ice-water in their veins instead of blood. In this instance, the phenomenon is known as cockpit humor and it’s synonymous with sick humor, as described above.

Military flying, and even commercial transport aviation, is an inherently risky undertaking with potentially dire consequences ranging from very unlikely to imminent in almost every exercise of manned flight. Given the speeds and altitudes most aircraft operate at these days, what may have been up to a certain point a smooth, uneventful milk-run can suddenly and without any warning whatsoever turn into an immediate life-or-death emergency. Pilots know that all too well and deal with it in the same irreverent way invasive cardiologists do: with disarming deprecations and ironic humor.

Gonzales informs us in his book (an unexpected revelation to many who read it) that a strong sense of humor is one of the chief assets anyone faced with sudden catastrophe ought to possess and he mentions Elizabeth Kübler-Ross’ famed study of the ‘5 Stages of Grief’ (sometimes known as DABDA, or 1. Denial, 2. Anger, 3. Bargaining, 4. Depression, and 5. Acceptance). When confronted by the unimaginable or unconfrontable, these 5 stages of attitude typically affect most normal human beings.

While Kübler-Ross’ pioneering work in human psychology was originally directed towards loss (of a loved individual), it also applies to the survival process in that only when a person reaches the 5th and last stage of this progression may that person achieve an approximation of unburdened openness required to deal with the unutterable tragedy of the moment. It is as true in an extreme survival situation as it is in the loss of a beloved, close family member. For only when one has come to that final (and otherwise seeming end-point) outlook can one embrace the reality being faced openly and deal with it in a constructive, rather than self-defeating manner.

Among the many characteristics Gonzales cites that are typical of survivors of just about any extreme event is the ability to look upon what one has been presented with calm, perhaps humorous disregard. He cites numerous examples of individuals in situations that would have an otherwise fatal outcome as being able to dispassionately consider the prospects confronted as ‘amusing’. Once that outlook has been achieved, all of the artificial constructs and self-protective mind-barriers that we have built up in our structured lives fail and fall away, like scales from the eyes, and we may then center ourselves and attempt to do as the Stoic philosopher Epictetus in ancient Greece advised Marcus Aurelius Antonius to do in 130 CE: “View the elements of what might appear as misfortune and determine what they may have of value to overcome it.”

It is interesting to pause here to consider that the ancient Chinese ideogram for catastrophe is comprised of two subset characters, that of danger and that of opportunity. This is essentially the same thought Epictetus was referring to. In other words, we must cast out whatever internal rules, structures and behavioral proscriptions we have spent a lifetime fortifying ourselves with and look upon events with the wholly new and untainted gaze of a small child: What is this and how can I use it to my advantage? This is the true survivor’s most precious asset. All the checklists, technological tools and mechanisms in the entire world are not worth as much as this simple realization.

Among some of the many other survival mind-assets Gonzales mentions in his book are these: 1) in the face of seeming catastrophe, change your mindset of utter devastation by trying to help (others). This changes your status from the negative role of victim to the positive role of rescuer and it can vastly alter your ability to apply whatever resources you have to maximum avail. 2) develop small rhythmic patterns that can help remove the overwhelming burden of imminent doom and replace it with what a psychologist once referred to as baby steps towards meaningful recovery. In this last instance, the reference is to something as simple as forcing one’s self to repeat small, congruent efforts (such as taking steps forward, or moving one’s feet in a series of repeated moves); that simple process allows a mind that has otherwise been emotionally shorted-out by the seeming impossibility of survival to once again engage in meaningful, purposeful self-recovery. Instinct, closely coordinated with rational qualification.

Gonzales mentions, in addition to his fascinating citations involving extreme survival situations, other things that indicate he is truly a wise ‘sensei’ in the matter of deep survival theory. One of these is his observation that retired pilots ‘wear soft shoes’, talk ‘softly’ and walk slowly. His explanation is that in a cockpit you want to wear footwear that enables you to stay in touch with what the aircraft is doing at all times. This typically means rudder pedals, but it also means that given the fact that cockpits are full of intricate instruments and control devices, you don’t want to wear shoes on your feet that will interfere with either those controls or with your ability to feel the pulse of the aircraft’s actions. This is a phenomenon known to aero-physiologists as proprioceptic senses, or more commonly seat-of-the-pants sensory feedback. It is certainly an important aspect of my own aviation experiences.

It is also a factor in motorcycling (or certainly should be). One thing I’ve noticed in my own motorcycling experience is the propensity for ‘bikers’ to prefer rigid and substantially built boots. Certainly, the rough, macho and masculine appeal of thick boots has a certain aesthetic appeal, but while there may be actual sense to this (the desire to physically protect one’s somewhat delicate and otherwise very-subject-to-injury feet), it is an attitude that is also potentially self-defeating in that hard, rigid boots insulate you from sensing the basic, rhythmic heartbeat of the motorcycle; it can also make it difficult to sense where the gearing is, since motorcycles are shifted (commonly) with the left foot and you definitely don’t want to shift the bike into the wrong gear at high RPMs or speeds! Indicator lights that are supposed to tell you exactly where the neutral position is often fail or don’t work properly, making soft shoes that allow the neural senses on the foot to feel where the gears are positioned highly preferable.

It is the reason why I always wear soft shoes when riding my motorcycle, rather than rigid engineer boots or the like, and it is for exactly the same reason that pilots wear soft shoes in an aircraft’s cockpit environment.

The human nervous system is a marvelous biofeedback system and it worked best when it is allowed to constantly inform us about what we are doing in harmony with a machine we may be operating. Motorcyclists often remark on the joy of merging with the machine and that is exactly what a pilot flying a Mach 2.5 aircraft also attempts to achieve, as well. That feeling of satisfying biofeedback that this merging process enables in people is simply too fulfilling and sensational to adequately attempt to describe it with mere words. Those who ride or who fly know this instinctively.

Gonzales remarks in several places in his book upon the need to adopt a hard, steely resolve when confronted by the need for self-survival in the face of a catastrophic turn of events and he references the incredible tale of survival by extreme English alpinist Joe Simpson, during a near-fatal mishap in the Peruvian Andes back in 1985 with his climbing partner Simon Yates.

After summiting the sheer southwest face (4,500 feet) of 21,000-foot-tall Siula Grande, Simpson slipped, breaking his leg shortly after they began their descent together. As a mountaineer myself, I am quite familiar with the likely consequences of such incidents and know that anyone breaking his/her leg at that height, so far from any inhabited area and possible rescue, is most likely already a dead man, since rescue with only a single other individual present is a near impossibility at such extreme altitudes.

In Simpson’s case (documented in his amazing book, ‘Touching the Void’), their attempt to descend was made virtually impossible when it was further complicated by Simpson’s fall over a ridge. His partner Yates, having done all he possibly could at that point to assist Simpson and faced with his own imminent death as his belay of Simpson began failing, finally cut the rope, causing Simpson to careen down the steep face and into a deep crevasse from which there appeared to be no possible escape.

It would have been the utter end of all hope for a less substantial person than Simpson, but Simpson not only succeeded in extricating himself from this impossible situation (the crevasse), he was also able to hobble more than 6 miles to reach their base camp with his broken leg…alone and unassisted, since Yates had long since given him up for dead. In doing this, he saved his own life against superhuman odds and provided a tale of personal perseverance and resourcefulness that will continue to inspire generations of mountaineers.

Gonzales’ book, in addition to taking us through a number of similarly ‘impossible’ instances of survival, has written a book that is both illuminating and captivating in its exquisitely compelling nature. At risk of employing the hoary old cliché of this being a book that is ‘impossible to put down’ (it’s true enough), this is a book that everyone should read. Not just those who are concerned with the basic nature of a fight against extreme odds, but those who wonder about those qualities of character and human nature that distinguish and separate individuals who are able to cope with extreme adversity (survivors)…and those who are not (victims).

Gonzales mentions something else that strikes me as quite pertinent in the pages of his book. He mentions that those who rigidly ‘follow rules’ are far less likely to survive a disaster that those who are inherently flexible and open to what he calls remapping the chemistry of the human brain’s Amygdala and the Hippocampus, the two parts of a brain that are principally involved in any ‘flight or fight’ situation (i.e. the facing of life-threatening circumstances).

It is impossible to adequately describe this book in the span of short few paragraphs and I certainly make no effort to do so here. Rather I hope that I have presented enough incentive with my scattered remarks to spur many of you on to reading this book for yourself. Gonzales will inspire you and perhaps even teach you things about yourself of which you hadn’t the foggiest notion.

I’ll close this meandering narrative of mine with one or two last tidbits. In this book, Gonzales mentions that in most cases those who do not survive die from the simple fact that they have concluded that their situation is hopeless and simply sit down to die. As such, they literally will themselves to die without a struggle and that reminded me of my experience on the Hawaiian island of Moloka’i, known to Polynesian historians and cognoscenti as ‘Moloka’i of the Powerful Prayers’.

The appellation came into use to describe the mysterious ability of the island’s feared Kahunas (priests) to cause certain individuals to die. While the deaths were regarded (by islanders) as the result of malevolent prayer intended to kill designated individuals, psychologists who have studied the phenomena have determined that while there may have been no actual malevolent spiritual powers at work in this process, the unshakable belief of the ordinary people on the island in the power of such priests was such that the victims literally resigned themselves to death, after having been so cursed by one of these Kahunas.

The process finds remarkable resonance in survival scenarios, such as those described by Gonzales, in that in the preponderant number of his citations, those who did not survive a would-be lethal event had mentally ‘given up’ any hope of survival. In essence, they were victimized by a belief similar to the victims of Moloka’i’s evil Kahunas: they essentially gave up all hope and willed themselves to death.

Psychologists well know that human beings can and frequently do ‘kill themselves’ in a similar manner, when the rigidity of their hard, fixed life-structures overcome any possibility of allowing them to apply flexibility and resourcefulness towards enabling a different, positive outcome.

Finally: Gonzales states that we should never underestimate the power of simple prayer…whether one believes in a deity or not, prayer in the face of absolute doom is a powerful human motivator. Even for a complete non-believer such as myself, that makes perfect sense.

The human mind (in concert with the human spirit) is indeed an amazing thing. As the Bard succinctly put it in Hamlet, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

----------------

Postscript:

I was so impressed with this book that I this morning searched for and ordered the hardbound version of it to add to my reference library on survival. It's that important and should be on everyone's short-list for reading...even if you're not an adventurer.

Thinking about the wealth of information contained in Gonzales' amazing book prompted me (you will recall that I'm the world's greatest living 'safety wonk', a person who has accumulated a lifetime of risk-avoidance expertise) to recall my own nearest brush with possible death.

It took place on the island of Moloka'i in Hawai'i some years back. I was having a wonderful respite there, working on a book and taking my time savoring all that beautiful, natural Moloka'i has to offer those who seek serenely unspoiled scenic splendor (rather than the more typical Disneyesque haole malihini tourist vacation diversions offered on the other islands).

I had decided one day, after a disastrous liaison with a wahine I hardly knew, to travel out to the far southwestern end of the island, to a small cove known as a safe and somewhat protected place to bathe; one could swim there without fear of being swept out into the stiff ocean currents in the Kaiwi Channel that can quickly take the careless out into open water.

Dixie Maru Beach, as it is known, is a lovely, calm and bucolic place to swim out into the warm southwest corner waters of Molokai, but typically attracts very few visitors in the so-called 'off-season' on the island. It takes a bit of a drive to reach it and there's absolutely nothing in terms of inhabitations or people in the immediate vicinity...all of which helps enhance its rustic Polynesian charm tremendously. Standing there, you could easily imagine yourself as DeFoe's Crusoe, cast ashore on a remote but lush tropical island.

So there I was, licking my romantic wounds and seeking some isolated solace. Parking my car, I wandered out onto the beach and began admiring the remote but spectacular scenery that borders this small cove. Near the edge of the beach were some mud flats that had been created after the last hard rain's runoff and the top surface of that 100 x 60 foot patch was crusted over with the typical crackled pattern we so often see on muddy ponds and dry lakes that have evaporated in the harsh sun.

The crackled mud surface inconveniently lay between me and the water's edge, although I certainly could have circumvented it by moving to my right and taken a slightly longer path towards the surf.

Momentarily overwhelmed by the beauty of this spot, my normally acute reasoning powers suddenly deserted me and all I could think of was getting over to that beautiful warm ocean.

Hence, dressed in nothing but my Speedo and wearing 'slippahs' (localese for 'flip-flops', or Zoris), I walked straight towards the water and out over this large splotch of dried mud! Big mistake.

I was about 20 feet into the very midst of it when what had appeared to be solidified surface mud suddenly gave way and I dropped down into a quagmire of sucking mud up to my knees.

At that point, all of my 'Spidey senses' came blazingly alert and every single thought I'd ever had about the perils of quicksand instantly threatened to short-circuit my brain in the span of a mere nanosecond.

I was hopelessly mired. Worse yet, the tinyest movement of my lower extremities to remove themselves from the sucking stuff simply just drove me deeper into it.

By this time, my slippahs were casualties of war, having been claimed by whatever minor Hawaiian demi-god oversaw this beach. Panic was just a few seconds away from me as I quickly ran over everything I'd ever read about self-rescue from quicksand. Nothing clicked.

I had no companion to pull me free and certainly had no rope tied around me, atached to a friendly coconut palm. There were no branches nearby to grasp (as I'd seen countless Hollywood explorers in the Douglas Fairbanks mold do in the movies). And since there was no one else around, it was useless to shout to summon help. Gulp!

In that small, dim control-room of my senses, the Amygdala's situation boad was aglow with flashing red lights. Then, quite suddenly, a glimmer of the absurdity of what had happened smashed its way through my panic-locked awareness, as I mentally stood back and reflected on the irony of gradually being sucked under the mud, as the tide rolled back in set against the glorious spectacle of a Moloka'i sunset. What a hoot! The possibility of dying in such a drop-dead gorgeous setting was too much! I may or may not have actually smiled.

And that snapped me back to what Gonzales describes as 'beginner mind'...that state of simple childish wonder that so compliments a person caught in otherwise dire circumstances beyond their apparent control. I quickly found myself 'being there' in the moment and it enabled me to persevere in trying to remove myself from the deadly quagmire of sea-mud.

After much painstaking effort and patience, I was finally able to pull one leg up and clear of the perfect suction that had obtained and set about getting the other one up similarly. As the tide began to come back in, and after several hours of persistant work I was indeed finally able to stagger back onto the solid sand of the beach and take a deep breath.

Muttering a silent thanks to the akua (god) of that particular beach, it was then that I noticed a local placidly fishing off an adjacent beach about a few hundred meters distant (and partly hidden by the foliage). He had to have been disinterestedly observing my struggle the whole time, imperturbably content to ignore my plight and continue casting for shore fish. Probably thinking to himself "Another dumb haole acting stupidly."

As for me, dumb haole or not, I had quite literally been in a serious jam for several hours and now I was coated in that characteristically reddish volcanic mud that typifies the island soil. There was no getting it off before I drove back into K'kai (Kaunakakai), so I bore my special mark of shame for the time it took to get back to the hale (house) and shower. Even then, it was as if the Dixie Maru Beach akua was determined to keep me marked as a warning to keep my head about me at all times. That stuff is tenacious!

Thinking back on that incident today, I realise how easily I could have ended my life then and there...all while ironically enclosed within some of the most spectacular tropical shore surrounds on Earth!

That lesson was most assuredly NOT lost on me and to this day I periodically remind myself that, as the hoary old saying admonishes us: "If it doesn't kill you, it simply makes you stronger."

Hopefully all of you who read this will read Gonzales' book and recognise potential killing grounds before they claim you! But don't forget to smile whimsically when you stare death in the face!  Death may love smart-asses, but he HATES whimsy. Aloha nui loa!