{"id":420,"date":"2025-12-03T22:04:17","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T22:04:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/knifevoyager.com\/?p=420"},"modified":"2025-12-03T22:04:18","modified_gmt":"2025-12-03T22:04:18","slug":"fear-can-be-a-great-motivator-epictactical-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/knifevoyager.com\/?p=420","title":{"rendered":"FEAR CAN BE A GREAT MOTIVATOR \u2013 EpicTactical"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Little by little, I learned to identify and use the plants that freely grew all around us, and sustained generations of native Americans.\u00a0 In addition, since my mother\u2019s brothers were all farmers, my mother had the knowledge to teach me how to grow food from seeds and cuttings.\u00a0 And as I began to eat more and more wild foods and foods that I grew, my fears of dying in a worldwide famine subsided.<\/p>\n

I found that my interest in useful wild plants very enriching.\u00a0 I even spent many weekends and week-long trips in the local mountains eating only what I could find wild. I began the wild food quest out of a primal fear, and soon I was walking on an exciting path, the same path that all my ancestors walked.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t just getting good nutrition from wild foods.\u00a0 I was making my own medicine as well.\u00a0 Soon, with some guidance from Larry Dean Olsen (author of \u201cOutdoor Survival Skills\u201d), I was learning how to make fire from the woods that nature provided, and I was making sandals, woven mats, baskets, shelter, and containers from the botanical world.\u00a0 I\u2019d come a long way from the fear that I would die as a victim of circumstances, to now seeing the world as my ancestors saw it.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Nyerges (right) leading a survival skills class in the Arroyo Seco, circa 2005<\/p>\n

Nature became my supermarket, pharmacy, and hardware store.\u00a0 I no longer lived in fear of an impending famine.<\/p>\n

As I grew older, I became enmeshed in the so-called adult world of finances and rents and mortgages and insurances and taxes (et al). This led to new fears, actually two parallel fears.\u00a0 One, I hated seeing all the things that people would do \u201cjust for money.\u201d\u00a0 I never wanted to become like those people.\u00a0 But I also sometimes worried that I would run out of money, and become destitute and homeless.\u00a0 I have accepted that money is an essential part of modern life, that we need it just like we need oxygen.\u00a0 But I have also found a balance so that my life is about \u201csomething,\u201d and not just about the pursuit of money.<\/p>\n

My fears have gradually subsided.\u00a0 Yes, I accept death and an inevitable aspect of life, and I do not fear it, or think about it much.<\/p>\n

Fear can be a powerful motivator if we look at the cause of the fear honestly, and make an effort to take some positive action.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Nyerges, circa 2010, teaching students how to identify wild foods<\/p>\n

A TRUE STORY<\/strong><\/p>\n

As the summer of 1999 was moving along, panic was growing that the world as we knew it would come\u00a0 to an end when the clock turned to 2000.\u00a0 They called it Y2K.\u00a0 I received a phone call one day from a panicked man who wanted to know where he could dig a hole in the desert.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s the hole for?\u201d I asked him.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me to live when hell hits the fan.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOh,\u201d I replied, waiting for more.\u00a0 \u201cYou mean Y2K?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes,\u201d he replied in a panicked voice.\u00a0 He explained that he was frightened that he\u2019d lose his business and lifestyle in the aftermath of Y2K.He believed that his \u201cfriends\u201d and employees would turn on him.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo how does a hole in the desert solve your problems?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d live there when society descends into chaos.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOh,\u201d I responded, adding, \u201cSo have you ever camped out for the night?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo,\u201d he replied.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo do you think you\u2019d be able to live in good health in a hold in the desert?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n

Silence.<\/p>\n

We continued to talk.\u00a0 He explained that he was affluent, lived alone, ran a business, and feared he\u2019d lose it all if he stayed in urban San Diego.<\/p>\n

\u201cLook,\u201d I told him, \u201cI\u2019m not going to take you anywhere to dig a hole.\u00a0 That\u2019s silly!\u201d\u00a0 I suggested that he was serious about getting out of a big city to travel around the county and visit small towns. Take some time.\u00a0 Find something that felt good to him.\u00a0 I explained that rural people all tend to know each other and they tend to be more self-reliant than your average city person.<\/p>\n

He called me a few more times to ask questions, and each time his voice was less panicked.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know what he ultimately did (or didn\u2019t do), but I assume he didn\u2019t go to the desert to dig a hole.<\/p>\n

The world didn\u2019t end with Y2K but it did bring many fears to the surface and moved many people to begin taking concrete steps to help relieve and eliminate their fears.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Little by little, I learned to identify and use the plants that freely grew all around us, and sustained generations of native Americans.\u00a0 In addition, since my mother\u2019s brothers were all farmers, my mother had the knowledge to teach me how to grow food from seeds and cuttings.\u00a0 And as I began to eat more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":213,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-420","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/knifevoyager.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/knifevoyager.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/knifevoyager.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/knifevoyager.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/knifevoyager.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=420"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/knifevoyager.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":421,"href":"https:\/\/knifevoyager.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420\/revisions\/421"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/knifevoyager.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/knifevoyager.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/knifevoyager.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/knifevoyager.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}