Alba gu bràth!

Every year in April, I observe with due reverence a couple of historical events that most folks don’t. One is “the shot heard ’round the world” — the birth of our nation at the battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19th, 1775.

The other was yesterday, April 6th. In 1320, that’s when 39 fearless Scots put their hand to the Declaration of Arbroath — the Scottish declaration of independence, which influenced our own.

I always return to this passage in Arbroath:

“As long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be brought under English rule. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom — for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself.“

One of my ancestors, sword drawn on the side of Sir William Wallace — aka “Braveheart” — and Robert the Bruce, was a signatory to Arbroath. I’m both humbled and proud to have the blood of honorable Scots coursing through my veins, to be descended from men who didn’t fear death so much as they loved Liberty.

Alba gu bràth!

. . .

“Why does Rice play Texas?”
President John F. Kennedy, in an address at Rice University on September 12th, 1962

. . .

As long as I’m on the subject of bravery, it’s worth recognizing that early Monday afternoon, a crew of four traveled farther from Earth than anyone else in human history. We know that manned spaceflight is inherently risky and mind-numbingly difficult, but few of us grasp how truly dangerous it is.

These explorers rode a controlled explosion into orbit, equivalent to almost four kilotons of TNT. On their return, they’ll free-fall toward Earth at an incomprehensible 25,000mph, another record. In between those events, they’re beyond rescue should something go awry.

JFK’s promise back in 1962 framed the answer to why some of our fellow fragile humans accept extreme personal risk in order to extend mankind’s reach:

“We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win….”

We, as a species, accomplish nothing through ease. We advance only by confronting difficulty. Unless we break through boundaries and exceed limits, there’s no achievement.

We do these things because they’re hard.

No, not all of us have The Right Stuff to become astronauts. Few of us are equipped physically and mentally for an assault on Annapurna. Only a handful of Americans could serve in the 75th Ranger Regiment, DEVGRU or AFSOC.

What’s left to us mere mortals, then, is simply to challenge ourselves, as long as we breathe and move, to be better. To do more. To kick our addiction to shortcuts and comfort and do hard things.

Remember that 60-something homesteader I quoted here not long ago?

“I get up every morning committed to doing The Hard Things, the hard way.”

Neither martyr nor masochist, she tests herself, pushes herself. She knows that she has to beat the elements, the ravages of aging, the days when everything goes wrong. It’s hard. That’s what she signed up for.

She’s in it to win it. I can relate.

As JFK said 64 years ago, it’s the hard things that “organize and measure the best of our energies and skills.” I get up every day committed to doing precisely that.

It all came together for me Monday morning — upper 30s, calm winds and no burn ban. I knew just what I wanted to do.

I rolled up to Daybreak Point before 8am.

It had been three months since I built a fire ring there on the east slope. Only one thing was missing — a fire, of course. Yesterday would be ideal for the christening.

I pulled only two chunks from my tarped stack. Everything else I foraged. And I got the burn started the old-fashioned way.

Honestly, I was shocked at how quickly the fire took off. The drilled steel ring, salvaged from a burn barrel, performed exactly as I hoped it would — despite being ten inches deep, it drafted beautifully in those dead-calm conditions.

It burned hot, evenly and virtually smokeless. It ate everything I fed it, hardwood and cedar, from bone-dry deadfall to damp pith. I couldn’t’ve asked for better.