CLIMATE APOCALYPSE CONTINUED
are disrupted, life gets wild, and survival is fre-
quently based on improvisation.
And this would really be tested, he said,
if I were to try his annual three-day survival
class in the San Bernardino National Forest,
where students go out carrying only a water
bottle and a knife. You will leave with no food or
water, and will consume only what is found, the
materials said. Students will learn to overcome
the unexpected. “We’re going to force you to
problem-solve under stress so you can put that
to use if you ever get in a real scenario,” Coyne
said. “That way you don’t panic, you don’t think
it’s hopeless.” I told him I wanted in. He smiled.
“You know, it’s not very common that people
train under stress,” he said. “Not at all.”
Which enables me to say that while it is
also not very common to get your car stuck
in snow on a December morning in Southern
California, it can happen. A few weeks after the
first class, at nearly 7,000 feet, about a two-hour
drive east of Skid Row, the terrain was all white
mountains and alpine forest. The forecast for
the weekend looked grim: three days straight of
rain and snow. When I arrived, other students,
also stuck, were discussing what to do, until
one of Coyne’s instructors, Adam Mayfield,
hiked out of the woods: a tall, alarmingly hand-
some man dressed like a lumberjack, with an
ax and several knives hanging o≠ his belt.
“Who’s ready to su≠er?” he said in a booming
voice, grinning, then set about getting our cars
properly parked.
To learn later that Mayfield, in addition to
teaching survival skills, is a working Hollywood
actor, a former star of All My Children, really
only cemented the L.A.-ness of it all.
The plan described in our materials was suc-
cinct. Day 1 is an introduction to the critical
skills you will use. Days 2–3 are in the field and
students will receive no outside food or water.
No sleeping bags or gear allowed. Our group,
mostly in our 30s and 40s, included three
engineers, a nurse, and a surgeon. Largely
men, a few women, people had flown in from
Chicago, New York City, and Detroit. The gen-
eral mood was buoyant dread. About 20 people
had been expected, but only 13 showed—due
to the weather conditions, Mayfield suspected:
“You’re going to be really challenged this week-
end. Some of you might get dehydrated. Some
of you may become mildly hypothermic. We’re
trying to develop for you the closest thing we
can to a true survival emergency.”
He added, “I love this.”
People don’t often talk about Los Angeles
County as wild, and yet L.A. is the only
metropolis in the United States split by a
mountain range. “One associates New Age
gauziness with California, but the flip side is
that Californians are much more familiar with
how violent nature can be,” Kit Rachlis, the
former editor in chief of Los Angeles magazine
and L. A. Weekly, told me. “On the one hand is
the soft, beautiful Los Angeles light. On the
other are the Santa Ana winds. We have forces
of nature that change peoples’ moods—and
bring fires. Crossing the street in Fort Greene,
Brooklyn, or a bridge on the Seine in Paris, you
just don’t feel that way.”
The first day’s tasks included building fires
and learning how to “baton” wood—i.e., split
logs with a knife. In the afternoon, we worked
in pairs to build A-frame structures out of
fallen branches—shelters we’d be sleeping
in that night, albeit with sleeping bags. Then
the clouds started pissing. My partner, a tech
worker named Farshad, and I raced to com-
plete our shelter, piling on a slurry of needles
and branches, working by headlamps in the
rain. Everyone was soaked and shivering. The
temperature was in the 30s. “You can die in
this kind of weather,” I heard one guy say to
himself quietly. An hour later, he’d pulled the
plug. “I mean, that’s a basic survival lesson,
right?” he said, announcing that he was leav-
ing. “Don’t make stupid mistakes?”
Awkward silence. Then Mayfield walked
him out to the road and helped him get his
car unstuck.
Not much sleep was slept that night. The
roof of leaves was only 12 inches from our
noses. Dirt fell in my mouth. Snow mixed in
with our roofing materials and melted on my
face. It was seven hours of claustrophobic
water torture.
Mostly I thought about whether I was mak-
ing a stupid mistake.
Saturday it rained nonstop. Temperatures
were in the upper 30s, low 40s. Two more
people dropped out, deciding they were in
over their heads. Our reduced band set out
and spent the next two hours crossing snowy
hills. Even in the rain and mist, the terrain
was stunning. Mayfield, smoking cigarettes
like a French mountain guide, pointed out
survival hacks along the way: how to purify
creek water; how the bark of a willow tree
can be chewed for its salicin, a chemical with
properties similar to aspirin. Before we left, he
had shown us how to make a fire with found
materials—a branch bent into a bow, a piece
of cord, a small stick for a drill, and a flat piece
of wood. With a couple of minutes of sawing,
he’d suddenly have fire in his hands. It was
astonishing to see, though it would be quite
di∞cult to replicate given the conditions out-
side, he explained.
Eventually we reached a clearing along a rid-
geline of oaks and spruce coated in fog. None of
us knew where we were. Farshad and I, plus a
guy named David, scoured the area, searching
for branches to build a shelter to survive the
night. After two hours we had a structure. After
four hours, a roof and vestibule. By that point,
without food or water, we were moving pretty
slow. Our gloves, socks, and boots were soaked.
The cold was inside and out. That night, as we
settled side by side on wet dirt and leaves, deep
shivers would start in my belly and ripple to
my fingers. David occasionally crawled out
to do push-ups in the mud, otherwise he lay
huddled. Farshad kept saying under his breath,
like a death rattle, Fuuuuuuuuuuck. Around
3 a.m., Farshad said he couldn’t feel his feet
anymore. His breathing sounded raggedly shal-
low. “This is the coldest I’ve ever felt in my life,”
he said and went out for a walk. When he got
back, David worked him through some squats
while I announced a new plan: We’d sandwich
him with our bodies, and for all our sakes the
next five hours would be mandatory spooning.
And it worked. After a few minutes pressed
together, heat radiated at the contact points.
After an hour, Farshad’s breathing seemed to
return to normal. By 6 a.m., we went out and
did jumping jacks of joy. Others emerged from
their hobbit dens and joined us. There would bemore lessons throughout the day—how to build
a stretcher for an injured party, how to signal
for rescue—but all anyone could talk about was
the thrill of surviving, of gaining the confidence
to stick it out. Of rallying together to survive the
night. Leaning on those around us, in the way
that disaster demands.
When I finally got in my car, fatigue started
to take hold. I drove back to the city with the
windows open, chugging co≠ee, thinking over
what I’d learned. It went something like this:
We may be a shortsighted species when it
comes to planetary survival, but the corollary
is that many people, in clear and present dan-
ger, want to help one another. And that, apoc-
alypse brain or not, I am more resilient than
I know, though it has little to do with being
tough. Hardness is a sign of fear, whereas soft-
ness, being vulnerable in front of others, being
the one to extend a hand first, feels incredibly
empowering. To say the Horsemen are here,
that nature is not a beneficent force, that
humanity in aggregate is rotten—but people
individually are lovely—these were my beliefs
before this story and still after. But somehow,
now, I’m more at ease.rosecrans baldwin’s latest novel,
‘The Last Kid Left,’ was one of NPR’s Best
Books of the Year. He’s at work now on a
nonfiction book about Los Angeles County.ADDITIONAL CREDITS
Page 58. From left: courtesy of Marine Serre;
courtesy of Phoebe English; Giovanni Giannoni;
Mitchell Sams
Page 60. Courtesy of Marine Serre (3)
Page 62. Courtesy of Phoebe English (3)
Page 63. Giovanni Giannoni (3)
Page 64. Mitchell Sams (3)
P a g e s 7 6 –7 7. All images courtesy of Bring a Trailer
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