[Legally Blind: The Book] Part 1: Chapter 11 - Initiation

I’d sunk deep into the mud of despair, but I’d come to learn that with a little effort and the spirit of exploration, one could always sink lower.

As my isolation grew and I became more disconnected with everyone and everything, it became clear what I had to do: I needed to take on the entire system single-handedly. In my delusional, persecution complex-driven world, I was reinventing myself like a pissed-off phoenix. At fourteen, I was hard and bitter. What was once hypersensitivity and empathy was now hyperinsensitivity and vengeance. I collected weapons, learned about deadly plants, and became quite proficient with every kind of gun, of which there was no shortage of in the “Live Free or Die” state. In short, I was becoming a paranoid sociopath.

I was sent to therapists, social workers, and Rudolf Steiner schools. Nothing worked, as I was fairly unreachable in my super-reinforced bubble of paranoia and anger. My parents decided I needed to be shipped off somewhere to be dealt with. Their first choice was military school, but I think even they knew that wouldn’t end well. Instead they sent me to a special survival camp in Montana for seriously fucked-up kids. This was no Boy Scout camp. This was the real deal, so much so that in today’s hyperliberal, politically correct, overly protective culture, the owner would be arrested and jailed for endangering children. But we weren’t children. We were social pariahs who would soon morph into repeat offenders. This camp was isolated far out in the Montana wilderness. Much to my surprise, it was co-ed! Our teacher was an old man named Beauregard Oldhouse.

The first day he told us how, years earlier on a hunting trip in Canada, he had lost all his gear, including his weapons, and almost died himself, in a white water river accident. Left alone and wounded in the wilderness with only a .22 caliber handgun and hunting knife that was strapped to his body, he attempted to make his way to the nearest outpost where he could call for help. After days of hunger and weakness, he was attacked by a large male elk and only managed to escape by jumping into a deep hole under the roots of a large dead tree—which did not please the bear that was living there. Instantly, and miraculously, and quite accidently he managed to kill the bear with his .22 when the bear opened his gaping jaw and lunged toward Bo and Bo’s tiny .22 toy bullet entered his mouth and into his brain at point blank range, instantly killing the bear. Bo spent the following days living off that bear. It was then he realized how little he knew about real survival. When he finally got back to civilization, he started the training camp.

I learned to how fish and hunt without equipment, identify edible plants, build fire from nothing, construct shelters, build weapons, use a knife the proper way, read the weather, and many other survival skills. We were tested every week.

“I’ll pick you up right here at this same spot, same time, in two days,” was all Bo said when he gave me the final test, which consisted of being dropped off alone deep in the woods somewhere near the Continental Divide with nothing but a knife and a book of matches.

There I was, alone in the wilderness, not another human in sight, and for all I knew, not within a hundred miles. I knew there were wolves, bobcats, and other animals that would happily make a meal of me in these mountains; I’d often seen them at the camp.

That night there was a freak storm and it hailed about four inches of ice. I was cold, hungry, vulnerable, and alone. My broken amygdala must’ve kicked into some sort of prehistoric extreme mode because I was terrified on a very primitive level, which was something new to me. There were no bullshit rules out there, no excuses, no egos or opinions, no philosophies. I was alone with nothing to fall back on, no one to save me. It felt extremely real, exhilarating, and liberating. This was what real freedom felt like! This was not the freedom I’d longed for as child. That freedom was little more than “Stop bothering me and let me do what I want”—the same form of freedom marketed and sold like snake oil[i] from Madison Avenue to Washington D.C. and, more often than not, refers to freedom from responsibility, from challenges, from one’s own fear—an escapism that appeals only to the childish and weak in us, and something our leaders are more than happy to promise in exchange for real freedom. No, this freedom I’d felt was the true freedom of “I, and only I, am responsible for my destiny”—and like real freedom, it was frightening, insecure, difficult, lonely, and incredibly empowering. There was no authority to make decisions other than myself, no social contracts or artificial rules and regulations; morality quickly boiled down to dead is bad, alive is good, and everything else is philosophy.

I’d only been out there alone for two days, and although it felt a lot longer as I had to stay moving to keep from freezing, it really wasn’t that long. However, they were the perfect two days. Even though I’d managed to catch some small fish, which I ate raw, after forty-eight hours of hunger, freezing cold with nothing but wet summer clothes, no sleep, and the permanent threat of being eaten, imagined or not, I’d transformed into something else. Maybe it’d be more apt to say that something awoke inside me, something primal and barbarian, something that connected me with the real roots of my race, that of hungry cavemen trying to survive.

As I was returning to the meeting point, I heard voices. I quietly approached and discovered that some Boy Scouts with full gear and food had set up camp next to a river. I hid and waited for the opportunity to steal their food and slink away before being discovered. I felt no guilt, no remorse, no concern whatsoever for those Boy Scouts. I certainly had no ill will toward them—they just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.

I was beginning to understand something about human nature that society not only considered taboo but seemed to go to great lengths to prohibit most people, but certainly not all, from expressing. I could not exactly put my finger on it at first, but eventually it became quite obvious.

Those responsible for suppressing this aspect of human nature were the same ones taking full advantage of it. Simply put, it is the realization that one is either the hunter or the hunted, that the big fish eat the small fish and that the first rule of survival is to be the one in control and use that control to secure that control.

This may seem boringly obvious, but to my fourteen-year-old mind which had never given any thought to the power structures of society this was an epiphany. Prior to this I was only concerned with the distribution of power within my growing, but small, world. It was clear that just as my power was controlled and limited by those immediately above, their power was controlled and limited by those above them, and so on, all the way up to the national and even global level. It was quite clear that each edict, law, and punishment had the specific goal to support this hierarchy. This was, and is, the case regardless of whether a society if one of “Rule by law” or “Rule of law.”[ii] The only real difference is the hierarchy it supports. What was not clear to me was who, specifically, the architects of such a system were, but simple logic would imply it was those with the most power. From my adolescent view of the world, and all that I had been programmed to believe, it was the politicians that seemed to fit that role. After all, it was common knowledge that the President of the United States was the most powerful man in the world. Whoever it was, it seemed clear that the architects of society were a small faction of humanity that had distorted the true nature of freedom to oppress others for their own advantage rather than use that freedom to benefit all. This realization holds true even more so today, of course with much more complexity and with politicians being significantly demoted on the power scale.

I returned from Montana changed. I had a new invincible power within me, one I’d inherited from my barbarian ancestors, the ones who survived where others had not, and my existence was proof of that. Moreover, it was a sacred authority and responsibility, for I knew that what I’d been given, by virtue of the fact that I existed, was the power and the right passed on to me by every single battle won by every one of my ancestors going back to the first form of life. It didn’t matter whether that lineage began with a swamp virus or Adam and Eve; that was a philosophical question with no bearing on the fact that the line of my ancestors continued due to their victories over the challenges they faced in their lives. My life was an homage to their success and my duty to continue was the only authority I recognized. This was divine authority. Not divine in that it came from God. No, God, like the laws of man and the authority they claim, was no more than a shadow we’d created when we’d turned our backs on the light of our true heritage. Where was the god of the fish when I tore him open and devoured him, just as a mountain lion may well have done to me? Where were the laws of justice when the freak storm almost froze me to death? By what power did the laws of man claim authority?

I was now the reigning master of my lineage. This power within me, granted to me by my ancestors, transcended the laws of society, and filled me with a sense of self-determination and self-authority. My code of living morphed from “Do good things; don’t do bad things,” to “Nature is the law of the land; I am the law of my life.” I did not feel this was a code based in anger but a secret passed on to me from the ancient past.

There’s a time for everything, and just like having a baby, the day of deliverance cannot be rushed or delayed. When it’s time to give birth, it is time, and all the resources one has work in concert to that end. This is also the case for stages of life, and no doubt why almost all indigenous cultures in the world have initiation ceremonies for their young men and women, usually around the same age that I was, fourteen years old.

Today in our culture, these rituals have been trivialized to the point of being completely useless. Bar/batmitzvahs, confirmations, and similar symbolic gestures do more to reinforce the child perspective of life rather than shift it to the adult perspective. True initiation can be dangerous, even deadly, especially for men. The closest thing our culture has to an initiation ritual for men is going to war, and for woman (I assume), menses, losing one’s virginity, and giving birth.

This was my time to become initiated, and those two days in the woods alone was exactly the right time for my rebirth, my transformation. When everything is poised to move in perfect harmony, it takes only the tap of a finger to begin the avalanche.

Like the initiation rituals of New Guinea, Tierra del Fuego, and many other cultures where the child is kidnapped and forced to battle the gods, only to discover after vanquishing his divine attacker that the man behind the mask of the god was his father, I was forced to face and fight my fears. That victorious boy tore off the mask of his attacker only to discover that behind the mask was the man I had become in the process of conquering my fears and darkness. I was now him and I wore the mask of the gods.

It was not the experience that transformed me. The experience was simply the trigger. What transformed me was “me,” a “me” who was growing and waiting for the precise time to emerge, to be born. The hunter in me was awakening, and what I hungered for was freedom.