The summer I was fifteen my mom and dad made the decision to send me to a wilderness therapy program because I was constantly in trouble at school and had developed a serious drug habit. My mom drove me to a cabin in Clayton, Georgia. I thought it was just another program I would have to get through. Instead men pulled me into a back room, strip searched me, and sent me to the hospital to get blood drawn. Then a truck carried me up a forest service road and dropped me in the Appalachian mountains with a pair of boots and a hiking pack.
I didn’t want to be there. I fought it in my head every step. But once everything I thought mattered was taken from me, my music, my car, my clothes, my Xbox, I started to see what did.
There’s more noise today than ever before.
Kids know more about K-pop and Roblox than how to do anything for themselves.
Men worship celebrities on Sundays while guzzling beer and losing their minds over games that don’t change a single thing in their lives.
People get furious over issues that don’t affect them and ignore the real ones staring back at them in the mirror.
Their health.
Their discipline.
Their ability to care for their families.
And the skills that actually matter, the ones that feed your family, keep you alive in the woods, and set an example of strength and love for your children, are mocked, downplayed, or dismissed as primitive. People act like not knowing how to cook what you kill or sit in the quiet of the woods is somehow a mark of refinement.
But what good is knowing every headline or chasing every trend if you can’t even take care of yourself and the ones who rely on you?
We don’t need more people chasing distractions.
We need families who can provide, endure, and lead.
FIELD
When cleaning doves, fill a 5-gallon bucket with water and pluck the birds while they’re submerged. The water traps the feathers so they don’t fly everywhere, keeps your workspace clean, and rinses the birds at the same time, making the whole process quicker and easier.
MINDSET
Strength isn’t forged by repeating the same comfortable motions. It’s built when you put yourself in awkward, unfamiliar situations that force you to adapt. Go to the gym, sure, but don’t fool yourself into thinking progressive overload alone makes you resilient. Carry a log across rough ground. Drag a deer out of the woods without a cart. Sleep outside when it’s raining. Train your mind to stay steady when your body wants to quit.
Routine builds comfort. Awkward challenges break it. Every time you step into something unrefined and uncomfortable, you carve new territory inside yourself. That’s where real resilience comes from. That’s how you become harder to kill.
Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general. — Mark Rippetoe
