Black Bears

Nothing in life is ever a pure positive it seems. Having done all my military training up to this point in the winter, summer brings a new set of challenges to the table. Hypothermia is off the table at least, though I have seen people go down with heat stroke in February as well as August. Bugs are a new one though. The sheer number of mosquitoes out in the training area is mind blowing, and for a few weeks right after they start hatching they are maddening. I'm covered in the scars from scratching hopelessly at over 300 bites acquired in the last few weeks. Thankfully as summer heats up, the 'skeets die off, but of course, new challenges emerge...Bears.

Bears are jerks. Bears are annoying, dangerous, and hate you. You'd love to shoot bears, but we're not allowed, some environmental protection thing. SO instead, we're resorted to scaring them away. By throwing dynamite at them.That's right, I spent last week throwing dynamite at bears. Bears who stole $20,000 worth of equipment. Bears who stole rucksacks so soldiers came back from patrols, tired, wet, and cold, and found they had no sleeping bags or dry clothes or anything. Bears who woke me up sniffing at my feet, until thankfully the sentry threw dynamite between us, or rather, next to me.

And that's where I am in my career right now, where I roll over and pull my sleeping bag off from over my head and look up at the bear at my feet, and then a third of a stick of dynamite goes off at my feet, and the bear runs away, and I immediately fall back asleep without so much as a shrug. The insane becomes the ordinary far too easily. But then curiously, the ordinary becomes the most amazing thing in exchange.

Friday afternoons have become the most surreal thing. There is no feeling in the world like it. Deploying to the field sunday night, driving the body all week long, smashing yourself against the ground and getting up again and running across broken terrain carrying a hundred pounds of equipment over and over again without sleep or food, in the rain, in the cold, in the heat, in the bugs, passing and failing assessments - it's all worth the feeling of showering and putting on some civies and getting in the car with some of the closer guys and hitting the town, windows open, to get some good food in you before the exhaustion catches up and you are down for the count.

And every sky is beautiful, and every woman is fantastic, and every meal is incredible. And the time slips by and soon it is dark and it is over and all you can think of is the next friday night. Because friday night is the only night with any promise, because saturday ends too quickly and sunday night you start again - but friday, friday is the furthest point between you and everything - putting on a uniform, drawing a weapon, being a soldier. And if I am thankfull for anything about joining the army, it is for knowing that no one else has experienced a friday night as full and incredible and important as we have.