Should I tell you the story about the time I got lost in the Badlands, a quarter mile from my car, stayed overnight in December, ending with search and rescue getting me out? Or maybe I should tell you the story about the time I almost died while skiing. There are two or three of those stories, at least! Or would you want to hear about the time I nearly drowned while whitewater boating on the Gallatin and Yellowstone Rivers? Oh – you want all of them? Well, there certainly is a theme, if you haven’t noticed.

When someone asks, “What does sustainability have to do with adventure and outdoor recreation?” most people might focus their answer around human-powered adventure, buying snacks in bulk to minimize waste, actually burying your poop, carpooling, Leave No Trace principles, etc. But when I think about sustainable adventure, as an adventure trauma healer/specialist who has seen a lot of outdoor recreationists burn themselves out on or scare themselves away from their favorite endeavors, I think about what is sustainable for the human participating in these activities – body, mind, and soul?

To sustain a long career in outdoor adventure, becoming familiar with navigating our inner terrain is arguably more important than our ability to navigate the outer terrain of Mother Nature, because no matter how good you are at adventuring, at some point in time, variables and luck will align against you to cause a major or minor catastrophe – will you be resilient enough to handle that? In fact, if you can’t manage your inner terrain (anxiety levels, fear, exhaustion, etc.), it often contributes to poor decision making, and increases your risk level of misadventure.

I can remember the moment I flipped my packraft in a huge hole on the Mad Mile in the Gallatin Canyon and found myself swimming the turbulent, high runoff water. My body did exactly what it was supposed to do and my nervous system came to the rescue, mobilizing an immense amount of energy  to save myself from drowning. At first, I recall finding myself in defensive swimmer’s position, looking downstream, and thinking to myself, this isn’t that bad, I can ride this out, right before several waves smashed into my face, making it nearly impossible to breathe. Then, panic set in as I realized I have to get out of this river NOW.

When things start to go wrong, our nervous system’s threat response activates. Then, if we become overwhelmed in this situation, it can result in stress injury (aka trauma). And over the years, these events stack up in your system. Let’s say, perhaps, you experienced an unplanned-could’ve-died-overnight, multiple near-death ski accidents, and multiple near-death whitewater drownings? This stress stacked up in my nervous system until my metaphorical stress cup reached capacity and started to spill over. When this happens to us, it can cause problems in our relationships: anxiety, panic attacks, nightmares, trouble sleeping, and avoidance of activities, to name just a few. Doesn’t sound very sustainable, does it?

For me, this looked like high anxiety when I planned to go skiing or boating. Even if my plan was to stick to easy, been-there-done-that runs. Because of my stress injury, I wanted to avoid all outings with my friends.

So how can we avoid becoming victims of stress injury if we can’t avoid things like scary swims, biking accidents, getting thrown from horses, rock climbing falls, and all the other inherent risks involved in our beloved outdoor activities? How can we possibly support our ability to sustain a lifetime of outdoor adventure and mishaps? Especially since stress injury doesn’t differentiate different stressors into different “stress cups.” Stress is stress and fills the same cup, whether it’s at home, at work, at play, or watching the news.

Once upon a time, decades or millennia ago, depending on your personal lineage, no one really suffered from stress injury the way we do today. Why? Because we lived in communities that had support for the body-mind-spirit, and knew how to heal the whole person and community when tragedy struck. The entire group would participate in weekly or monthly rituals that were akin to spiritual hygiene, and helped process anything that had recently occurred.

Nowadays, this kind of holistic way of life is rare. However, we can draw on this ancient wisdom to find alternative ways of supporting ourselves. When we are stressed out and overwhelmed, we can see somatic practitioners who are well versed in treating stress injury (sorry, but run of the mill cognitive therapy doesn’t typically cut it; it needs to be somatically based, for instance, the modality Somatic Experiencing® and we have dozens of practitioners in Bozeman).

Minimize your exposure to misadventure. Especially beware of getting sandbagged by more experienced partners who will tell you, “You’ll do great, it’ll be fine… a deer could do it!” (famous sandbagging words from Yours Truly to a friend scared of heights) just because they really want you to go do it with them. Do your own research about the difficulty of the outing. Do you really want to go? Does it sound like fun, or do you only want to go because you don’t want to be left out, but it’s realistically outside your skill level? If you do decide to go and push your limits, what kind of support might you need to get through the most challenging part?

Avoiding stress injury is all about support, regulation of the nervous system, skill, and risk management. First, aim to minimize exposure to stress. Secondly, when stress is unavoidable, surround yourself with support; know what things help you feel calm, grounded, and confident, and reach out for extra help when you can’t quite seem to kick whatever PTSD-like symptom has arisen ever since you-know-what happened.

Stress injury is just like any other injury. Left untreated, it might heal fine… or it might heal poorly, or not at all. Or, it might flare up at unexpected times and cause serious problems. None of which is sustainable.

After a lifetime of scary incidents while recreating, and despite these incidents seeming relatively non-traumatic, the truth was that I was finally brought to my knees between two competing impulses: go do the love/hate activities, or stay home. I was unwilling to do either of them. With some serious support to help my psyche heal from all the inflicted stress, I’m happy to report that I’ve found a wonderful balance in my adventuring. I know what brings me joy, and I’m able to go do it.