What is a Survival Cookie?
Over this past weekend I read my blog… something that I have not done since its conception many months ago. As I sit here trying to make a final decision on the “direction” I’m trying to go – I find myself going back to the original idea… survival cookies. Of course, one would have to know exactly what a “survival cookie” is in order to use it as a compass in guiding ones direction. So I will endeavor to define…
It was a cold and wet evening, the camp fire had finally grown to the point where I didn’t need to nurse it every few seconds to keep it alive. The crackling of wood and vents of steam from water soaked logs had diminished substantially. The sensation to my fingers had begun to return… providing exquisite pain to my limbs (exquisite because it meant they weren’t going to fall off). The snow was piled a good eight to nine feet all around me. The heat from the fire was beginning to smooth the surrounding snow, turning the rough patchy walls into a uniformed glaze that would eventually form a hard icy shell. There was something… something primal, something that has been engrained into my genetic code that caused me to stare…I sat fixated on the flames.
For the first time in days I opened my pack and retrieved the glossy green plastic package labeled “MRE” (Meal Ready to Eat). There are those that delight in the consumption of these pre-Vietnam era meals… I am not one of those. I respect the MRE, I respect its place in the military campaign and I respect the nutrients it will provide. But given the option of just about any other food source – I might pass on the whole “meal ready to eat” concept. Just the morning before, I found a frozen tree stump… I managed to peel back some bark and found a lovely nest of beetles and larva. They were slow moving because of the cold and provided me that protein boost I so desperately needed. But that was yesterday morning – some 36 hours ago… and a MRE is a prime rib dinner with lobster bisque at this point (if by “prime rib” you mean “beef stew” and by “lobster bisque” you mean “apple sauce”).
I mentioned some time ago, I drink my coffee black. MRE’s provide the consumer with a coffee packet, powdered cream and sugar. In order to preserve the powdered cream (keep it dry) it comes in a foil packet covered in paper. As I don’t use the cream and sugar (and nothing is ever wasted in the field), I learned a neat little trick. I mix the powdered cream and the sugar together and place the dry mixture back into the foil powdered cream packet. I then fold the packet shut and place it at the edge of the fire (not directly in it – but close). The heat of the fire melts the sugar, and mixes it with the powdered cream. Once the paper starts to burn off the foil, remove the packet. Inside you have baked a little vanilla cookie… a survival cookie if you wish. You would be surprised how such a tiny, mundane thing as a cookie can provide happiness in an environment where emotional well-being is your greatest asset.
Perhaps a Survival Cookie is that thing… that tiny mundane thing that gives us hope when hope is hard to find.
To call the first six-months of Combat Survival Training a “Tech-School” (as the military does) is akin to calling what’s going on in Iraq a “Training Exercise” (something the military often does as well).
In six months we had survived in every environment conceivable on this planet. Extremes like desert and artic were a given. Jungle and coastal was a cake walk (food-a-plenty). Days in a rubber raft in the swelling ocean, I laugh at dehydration and salt wound blisters...serve me up another seagull, the taste of garbage and crude oil is mother’s milk. Walking non-stop for nearly a week with a 130-pound pack, bring it on baby… bloody feet are “character builders”. Top it all off with being constantly antagonized, belittled and pursued… who wouldn’t love this?
And for what…Glory? Respect? Hell no… at this point it’s to prove to ourselves that we can do this. We needed to prove that we couldn’t be broken by nature, or by god or by that prick with the Tech Sergeant stripes. In the end we would stand tall and receive our badge – that little cookie shaped piece of metal that let’s the world know we survived.
Is a survival cookie a badge of honor? Is it something that authenticates your abilities and validates your triumphs? If so, does it need to be of metal and worn on your chest or could it be made of moments and decisions and worn on your face or on your soul?
Webster defines Survival as: a state of surviving (cheap ass answer); remaining alive or a natural process resulting in the evolution of organisms’ best adapted to the environment.
While a Cookie is defined as: any of various small flat sweet cakes (`biscuit' is the British term), the cook on a ranch or at a camp or a short line of text that a web site puts on your computer's hard drive when you access the web site.
This is relatively pointless – as Survival Cookie takes on a whole new meaning (in my mind anyway) and becomes more then the sum of its parts.
So where does that leave us?
For me – a survival cookie is that thing (be it physical or an idea) that allows us to continue despite ourselves.
- Hope that helps
It was a cold and wet evening, the camp fire had finally grown to the point where I didn’t need to nurse it every few seconds to keep it alive. The crackling of wood and vents of steam from water soaked logs had diminished substantially. The sensation to my fingers had begun to return… providing exquisite pain to my limbs (exquisite because it meant they weren’t going to fall off). The snow was piled a good eight to nine feet all around me. The heat from the fire was beginning to smooth the surrounding snow, turning the rough patchy walls into a uniformed glaze that would eventually form a hard icy shell. There was something… something primal, something that has been engrained into my genetic code that caused me to stare…I sat fixated on the flames.
For the first time in days I opened my pack and retrieved the glossy green plastic package labeled “MRE” (Meal Ready to Eat). There are those that delight in the consumption of these pre-Vietnam era meals… I am not one of those. I respect the MRE, I respect its place in the military campaign and I respect the nutrients it will provide. But given the option of just about any other food source – I might pass on the whole “meal ready to eat” concept. Just the morning before, I found a frozen tree stump… I managed to peel back some bark and found a lovely nest of beetles and larva. They were slow moving because of the cold and provided me that protein boost I so desperately needed. But that was yesterday morning – some 36 hours ago… and a MRE is a prime rib dinner with lobster bisque at this point (if by “prime rib” you mean “beef stew” and by “lobster bisque” you mean “apple sauce”).
I mentioned some time ago, I drink my coffee black. MRE’s provide the consumer with a coffee packet, powdered cream and sugar. In order to preserve the powdered cream (keep it dry) it comes in a foil packet covered in paper. As I don’t use the cream and sugar (and nothing is ever wasted in the field), I learned a neat little trick. I mix the powdered cream and the sugar together and place the dry mixture back into the foil powdered cream packet. I then fold the packet shut and place it at the edge of the fire (not directly in it – but close). The heat of the fire melts the sugar, and mixes it with the powdered cream. Once the paper starts to burn off the foil, remove the packet. Inside you have baked a little vanilla cookie… a survival cookie if you wish. You would be surprised how such a tiny, mundane thing as a cookie can provide happiness in an environment where emotional well-being is your greatest asset.
Perhaps a Survival Cookie is that thing… that tiny mundane thing that gives us hope when hope is hard to find.
To call the first six-months of Combat Survival Training a “Tech-School” (as the military does) is akin to calling what’s going on in Iraq a “Training Exercise” (something the military often does as well).
In six months we had survived in every environment conceivable on this planet. Extremes like desert and artic were a given. Jungle and coastal was a cake walk (food-a-plenty). Days in a rubber raft in the swelling ocean, I laugh at dehydration and salt wound blisters...serve me up another seagull, the taste of garbage and crude oil is mother’s milk. Walking non-stop for nearly a week with a 130-pound pack, bring it on baby… bloody feet are “character builders”. Top it all off with being constantly antagonized, belittled and pursued… who wouldn’t love this?
And for what…Glory? Respect? Hell no… at this point it’s to prove to ourselves that we can do this. We needed to prove that we couldn’t be broken by nature, or by god or by that prick with the Tech Sergeant stripes. In the end we would stand tall and receive our badge – that little cookie shaped piece of metal that let’s the world know we survived.
Is a survival cookie a badge of honor? Is it something that authenticates your abilities and validates your triumphs? If so, does it need to be of metal and worn on your chest or could it be made of moments and decisions and worn on your face or on your soul?
Webster defines Survival as: a state of surviving (cheap ass answer); remaining alive or a natural process resulting in the evolution of organisms’ best adapted to the environment.
While a Cookie is defined as: any of various small flat sweet cakes (`biscuit' is the British term), the cook on a ranch or at a camp or a short line of text that a web site puts on your computer's hard drive when you access the web site.
This is relatively pointless – as Survival Cookie takes on a whole new meaning (in my mind anyway) and becomes more then the sum of its parts.
So where does that leave us?
For me – a survival cookie is that thing (be it physical or an idea) that allows us to continue despite ourselves.
- Hope that helps
posted by Survival Cookies at 2:24 PM
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