I wanted to heal and thought the Colorado wilderness was the best place to do it. So I began six months of hunting and foraging, with a pile of leaves for a bed
wo days before I had a heart attack in February 2017, I had just got back from Alaska, where I’d been leading an expedition. At home in Colorado, I thought the chest pains were to do with the change in altitude. I was 37, and active. I’d been in the Marine Corps until 2011, then I became a wilderness and survival skills guide. I was training for a 245km ultramarathon through the Peruvian jungle. Even when I got to hospital, I struggled to believe I was having a heart attack, but I was rushed into an operating room and a stent was fitted.
When I came out of hospital three days later, I could barely walk and was put into cardiac rehab with a group of 85-year-olds. But I believed I needed something else to heal me. As an outdoors guy who could make stone tools and live off the land, I knew that was where I needed to be. And so, after several rehab sessions, I thought, “I’m out of here!” and went to live in a cave, near where I could hunt animals and drink from streams.
I spent around six months alternating between a conventional life and living in the Colorado wilderness. My wife and I were separating, but I didn’t want to be away from our two sons for too long, so I would come back often to connect with them. The longest stretch I was away in the wild was just under two months.
Read more
Videos
The official YouTube Channel of Donny Dust.
Donny Dust here! your local wilderness self-reliance educator, traditional skills practitioner and lithic artist. I appreciate you watching and following my journey. Donny Dust’s Paleo Tracks Adventures is a channel dedicated to teaching a creative and adaptive approach to survival, bushcraft and primitive skills.
The goal is to remove the “stuff” from your pack and show that many resources can be found and made in the wilds of the world. Know more and pack less. Learn, discover and explore the world around you.
