Scurvy! What It Feels Like When You are Vitamin Deficient
One of the best trips of my life taught me a
valuable lesson that was not even related.
Several years ago I had the opportunity to go on an adventure. This was not just any trip to a local park
for a hike adventure, but a multi week trek through the US/Canada Boundary
Waters. I didn’t know it then, but this
excursion would lead me as close to death as I had ever been. The original plan was for myself and 10 other
guys to canoe 50 miles in two weeks living off the land and about a weeks’
worth of food that we had packed.
The group arrived at the border safely
although according to paper work one of our crew never re-entered the US, but
that is another story. We went to our
outfitters and got all packed up for our adventure. We stayed the night at a local hostel and
left around 3:00 am in the morning. It
as a long drive and finally around 6 or 7 in the morning we arrived out the
first river that would lead us on a crazy adventure. We unpacked the canoes and got our gear all
loaded up. There were 5 canoes each loaded
with 1 big duffle bag of our gear and a large canoe that held 2 large duffels. Right at the beginning the river had no
official dock. We had to basically grab
the canoe and hop in.
We canoed for 14 miles that day. From 7:00am
to 6:00 pm. It was a long, fun, and
tiring day. We reached our first
campsite, which was an island in a lake that was big enough you could not see
the other side from the shore. We set up
our tents on an island that was close to the north bank. The bank of the lake was pure rock. The rock went 10 to 20 feet high on the
majority of the north shore except for a medium sized cove about a 20 minute
paddle from out island.
We got our tents set up on the island and went
out for a late night fish around 7:00pm it was still light out and the fishing
was great. We fished for 30 minutes
getting bass and pike for the night when a storm rolled in. We saw a wall, black as night coming from the
other side of the lake. Then we heard
multiple lightning strikes and we all decided to paddle back to our island
before it hit.
It turns out the storm was rolling in at 90
miles an hour and it was carrying with it a class 3 tornado. By the time we paddled to the main lake from
the cove, five foot waves rocked our
lake and 90 to 150 mile an hour winds seared our faces. The water was pure pain and the rain struck
like needles. My canoe got the furthest
before the storm hit and we were outside the cove. We made it 10 minutes before flipping. We
lost everything. All our gear and our
campsite was torn to shreds when we got back.
Half our food was gone and most of us lost our fishing gear to
supplement our food for the trip.
We had no cell phones and we eventually made
it out a few weeks later, but what struck us was how much pain our bodies,
especially our teeth were in. My teeth
ached for days due to the lack of proper nutrition. We lacked vitamin C and after two weeks of
mostly eating small amounts of fish, our bodies ached and teeth suffered. Moral of the story is when out on the next
excursion, bring vitamins along and keep them close so as not to be lost.
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