Your One Wild and Precious Life

Tell me, what is it that you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? Mary Oliver

It might sound hyperbolic, but Doug saved my life yesterday. Within one minute of getting a tick bite, I collapsed into unconsciousness, had a seizure, and began vomiting while unconscious. All this happened when we were deep in the bush. I don’t remember too much. I felt odd when the tick bit, then within seconds, my visual field narrowed and I felt as if I was on a train rapidly withdrawing into a deep, dark tunnel. The world, what I could see of it, span around, and then I was down. It was all so fast I did not even recognise that I was having an anaphylactic reaction, something I am, unfortunately, no stranger to.

Doug, who believed himself to be holding his dying partner of over 40 years in his arms, was amazing. He administered my epi-pen, cleared my airway, put me in the recovery position all while talking to the emergency operator and conveying a GPS location of our position.

I was long-lined out. The second time in my life. The first was after Doug got his knee stuck in a crack on Bugaboo Spire in the Purcell Mountains. That was a fun long-line (apart from the stuck knee), whirling around a couple of hundred metres above the spectacular Bugaboo Range. This last time, not so much. I was barely conscious and throwing up.

This is not, of course, the end of the story. Doug was left alone in the bush with two backpacks of climbing gear, a tough walk out and having watched his soul mate disappear into the air. My friends, Margot and Lippy were wonderful. Margot picked me up from Woden Hospital when I was discharged. I was dirty and smelly and had vomited on myself. Lippy made us a dinner. They both welcomed me into their home and were gracious hosts. I can’t thank them enough.

Life is beautiful, unexpected, above all precarious. Hug the people you love, forgive those you can, seize the day and don’t ever, ever, ever let a single day pass that you don’t thank god or the creator or whatever mystical creature you believe in that you live, breathe and can experience this one precious and glorious life.