Artistic Footprint

Being in the Shit.

For most, the phrase is usually referred to as “welcome to the suck” I call it: “Being in the Shit.” It’s a randomly confused desire to find yourself in places most wouldn’t want to be. It could be sleeping at the edge of a forest in a hurricane, or shoving Meals Ready to Eat covered in K.I.F.E (krap I find everywhere) down your throat with ash and mud caked hands. It’s endless physical training that doesn’t make you look or feel any stronger, only toughens you up for the coming job.

I’ve spent plenty of my time training. Not training like where you have professors or quirky instructors, but training like paramilitary “when I was your age” hand-me-down, applicable know-how. It’s the kind of training that theorizes what your body should do and then repeats it over and over again until it is automatic. Two years in the army, a year of firefighter college, and now through some fucking messed up smokejump training, I feel ready to perhaps explain what goes on in paramilitary training.

This education takes a person and turns them into a machine. It’s a type of shock doctrine that wipes you clean of who you are and what you value. Its tough to lose these things, to morph into a clean slate, but you also lose the things that hold you back. The little voice that says you should turn around is silenced. And once you are this vast, empty, spongy carcass, they have a huge canvass to paint tactics and operations-level sequences into the deep crevices of your mind, and it truly is an art.

First and foremost, the first thing that must appear is your inherent enemy, be it an insurgent in a window, the moments before a backdraft, an avalanche, or a crossover in the forecast. In training, you can’t get any of those things, so they must be created. Enter your instructor. His or her job is to symbolize that force. They call you maggot, laugh at how you stumble, threaten you with exertion, and re-inform you of how easy it is to go home.

But I wouldn’t have it any other way. How else do you remove doubt from a rookie lined up to do something immeasurably dangerous? How do you make him trust his training, equipment, and peers? That’s how it must be, because if you can’t handle the stress of training, then get the fuck out man because you sure as shit can’t handle the job. The physical training is scenario-based to stir your conscience more than ripping your muscles and blistering your feet. In parattack, their P-T sessions are hourly secretive missions that have been nicknamed things like “the mind-fuck run.” They must sit down and plan workouts to remove as much hope as possible, and redefine what you think of as “all you’ve got”

The point is that you’re training for a job that puts not just your life at risk, but the lives of your team, trainer included. My first time sitting in a wooden box shaped like an airplane for my first exit drill, I was shocked by how much focus and drive were in the eyes of my instructors as they demonstrated the procedure that I initially thought was so trivial. Because the job’s not about you. If you exit an aircraft too soon or all fucked up, you could end up tangling yourself in your stickjumper’s parachute lines, or throw yourself miles from the dropzone causing unnecessary rescue risk. Thus if you fail, your team fails. Which is why if one person can’t make their suit-up time, all of your rookies do pushups, because in reality, the whole crew loses because of your fuckups.

What they’re looking for isn’t the strongest, brightest, stellar applicant. What they care about is what you’re willing to put yourself through for the job. They just provide the opportunity. They want to see you sweat buckets, they want to see what point you decide to fail at. And I can tell you that the only time a recruit is giving it 100%, balls to the wall, point of no return effort, is when an uninspired roar or growl screams from their dry, blood-tasting throat. When all their energy is sapped, but they keep running on empty. Because they have no intention of cutting you from the program, they want you to drop out yourself. It makes for a whole new ball-game when you realize that it is truly up to you. From the moment you enrolled to your graduation day, you decide whether or not you will survive, because they will make you eat your own words, the ones you sold during the interview.

On examination day, it’s clearly obvious you aren’t putting pen to paper, you can leave your calculators at home. This exam is by no means a scholarly effort. But consider this: in jobs like this, it all comes down to the seconds. It takes seconds to jam a rifle, find yourself thumping off the fuselage of an airplane, or a storm front pushing your fire out of your control. The task to fix it can never be hesitant. It must be an instant and immediate, automatic fix. The problems are real and are guaranteed to happen, you need to be that kind of person that doesn’t falter, but remain calm in shit-myself situations, and remedy the task with staggering efficiency.

And after all the bruises, blisters, crusted-eye mornings, and throbbing muscles, what are you left with? The keenest, most badass and capable motherfuckers in the service. You realize that you went through all that horrid bullshit because the veterans before you did, and they can only trust you and put their lives in your hands if you survived it. Camaraderie grows as you and your team hit the dirt together and bonds through tough failure and valiant success, a friendship that builds on incidence.

Your personality can grow back, you can reunite yourself with society, and bring with you an endless novel of stories that really can only be interpreted properly by the ones that were there.

The regiment had an amazing smell of rotting  canvass, mouldy rubber rainjackets, cured timber, and boot polish. It possessed an eerie sound of ancient echoes in the drill hall and taps of steel-toes on the immaculate concrete floors, amongst the hum of printing machines and typists. You know this building never sleeps and somewhere in the basement there’s a ghost sorting out kit amongst loud signs and posters behind a cage and counter. Entering the mess hall you can place your friends amongst the plaque-mounted walls and barstools, their beer resting loyally in their hands. In the calm before the storm you can take a moment to feel the awe of history like being in the presence of an old statue with determined expression. You feel a strong yet reserved essence of pride as you glimpse the sunrise of membership, and respect for the ones that wore the same uniform you do now, and hope to project an encouraging image with that badge sewn to your shoulder.

I’m a few days away from my first jump, here’s my first thoughts on the upcoming day: The Jump.

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