And Now I Take on the Apocalypse

I'm a wimp.

I used to think I was strong, mighty, epic, could take on a raging allosaurus with naught but a raw steak and a small pocket knife, et cetera.

And then I went on a hike with my little brother and his family.

We hiked up Menan Butte in Rexburg, Idaho. It's almost a mile to the top, and extremely steep. Not quite must-climb-using-your-hands steep, but in parts it was about as steep as you can get without using your hands.

I was the last one to the top. Now, I could blame it on stopping to take pictures, which I did quite a bit of, but I know for a fact that wasn't it. I was stopping to take those pictures in just about every patch of shade along the trail while my gentlemanly husband stood between me and the sun because sage bushes don't really offer that much shade. My face was flame-red, sweat poured down my cheeks, and at times my breath came in labored gasps.

Meanwhile, my baby brother could have done jumping jacks clear to the top - with his 1 1/2 year old daughter on his shoulders - and been perfectly fine. His wife took it a little slower, and he stayed back to help her with that, but she still made it to the top a good 5 or 10 minutes before I did.

Okay, so my little brother is a big kid. He's 6'4", muscular, and country through and through to his bones. His wife is a tad shorter than me, averagely sized, but equally country. I grew up in the country every bit as much as my brother, and I love it desperately, but I don't even compare to either of them for incorporating it into my daily life. Maybe I should give myself some credit for that.

But here's the thing. My sister in law, who very thoroughly beat me to the top of that butte, was EIGHT MONTHS PREGNANT.

I was there in Idaho for her baby shower, because the woman was 3 weeks away from popping a freaking human being out of her uterus. And she dominated me.

Now, I know it wasn't a competition, and I don't feel the sting of competitive loss at all, but when you're sitting there in the shade of your husband's flexing torso, watching your sister in law disappear over the horizon as she lugs her 8.25 month fetus up a butte, and you can barely breathe, you kinda have to take a moment to step back and ask yourself the hard questions.

Like, if the apocalypse hit, would I be one of the survivors, or one of the statistics? 

I mean, seriously. If an 8 months pregnant woman can beat me to the top of a butte, how would I fare against a horde of zombies?

If Yellowstone erupted, sending waves of bison and grizzly bears running south for their lives while simultaneously knocking out power, food, transportation means, and every other bit of modern life in the entire Western half of the United States, how would I hunt a buffalo while fighting off a grizzly bear?

If ISIS hit our nation with a set of EMPs, wiping out the electric grid, rendering cars useless, and frying every electronic device within range of the pulse (my personal favorite scenario), how would I walk/bike/ride a horse the 1,000 miles to home and safety? How would I fight off desperate/starving other people also trying to escape the city who want the provisions I'm really not strong enough to be carrying? How would I get past that pesky mountain range that stands between me and home?

I was raised with emergency prep. It's a favorite pastime of my mom's, and I grew up weeding the garden, helping can peaches, inventorying our food storage, and staying up late passing around various apocalyptic scenarios that could possibly cause us to actually need these skills we were acquiring.

I know how to purify water. I know how to grow food. I know how to keep stored food fresh. I know first aide. I know fire. I know how to travel via horseback. I know how to work with a family to use teamwork to survive.

And in all that survival training, it never dawned on me that I might need to include physical fitness in emergency prep. I always just sort of assumed that when I needed to do something physical, I'd just do it. The words "physically incapable" never really occurred to me.

Flash forward a couple weeks.

Carl won a Pulse at work. This device is a pedometer, altitude meter, heart rate monitor, and sleep monitor all in one that also syncs with your smart phone.

Carl doesn't have a smart phone, so he gave it to me. It was a pretty effective slap on the butt.

The WHO recommends that to be healthy, you need to take a minimum of 10,000 steps per day.

Do you know how many steps I take on an average day?

3,000.

That's right, ladies and gentleman, I am 1/3 as active as I should be just for basic health. No wonder I couldn't beat an unborn child to the top of a hill. 

This is unacceptable. If I only ever walk a mile or two each day, how can I be expected to hike the Rocky Mountains on my 1,000 mile trek to safety?

So, since I'm wearing a pedometer all day, I set some goals.

To start with, bare minimum, 10,000 steps per day. That's roughly 5 miles. Also, I have to gain a minimum of 100 feet in altitude by taking the stairs or walking uphill.

I've done it for two days now.

My legs and butt are killing me.

But just you wait. I will dominate this apocalypse thing!!!

Oh horror of horrors.

So, I'm just sitting there in my fluffy rocking chair, all innocent like. Eating my burrito, you know. Minding my own business.

Suddenly, from the space between my elbow and my stomach, and onto the plate that sits on my lap, crawls a massive, black, spindly-legged spider.

This may be the first time in the last 25 years that I deliberately threw the entirety of my lunch into the air, and onto the floor.

[shudder] Uuuuuugh. [/shudder]