The overhanging rock about ten feet above the ground seemed a perfect spot for a bear hang to protect our food in the mountains. So I climbed up and suspended the bag over the rock. Unfortunately, as I adjusted the rope, I slipped and fell.

The landing on my foot dislocated my knee. Bad enough, but in the intense pain, I didn’t notice that when I fell over, a sharp stick pierced my back and lung. Earlier that week, I burned my arm with boiling water, caused internal bleeding by falling off a mountain bike, and had a stroke.

Wilderness First Responder Training

These and other assorted problems were part of Wilderness First Responder (WFR or “Woofer”) training. Our WFR class of forty-seven, most of them Wyoming Catholic College sophomores, took turns being patients and rescuers, the patients festooned with fake blood, baby teeth saved for pretend mouth injuries, and glued-on props like the stick in my lung.

My inspiration for getting WFR certification was in part an experience last fall when Maggie, the dog, and I were hiking. Ahead of us a man in his seventies slipped on ice and went over backwards. I ran up to help, but honestly, I had no idea what to do. His hiking companion sent me off with a “He’ll be fine.” Maybe he was, but he did land on his back on rocks. So when the opportunity came up, I signed up to learn.

Break a femur in the city (and I pray you never do) and an ambulance arrives in minutes with a high-tech traction splint to stabilize the injury while it whisks you off to the closest ER. Break a femur in the backcountry ten miles from the nearest trailhead (and I really pray you never do) and, assuming someone knows how, your traction splint will be improvised from whatever is at hand: tree branches, ski poles, parachute cord, extra clothes, and a lot of ingenuity. Once the splint is in place, you’re still ten miles from the trailhead and farther from an ER.

Rescue Teams

In addition to learning how-tos of wilderness emergency care, I was glad to find out about rescue teams. Our little town of Lander, Wyoming has a strong volunteer rescue team with ATVs, rafts, snowmobiles, and even a Snowbulance for winter rescues. In addition, the Fremont County sheriff’s office has a helicopter on call for immediate emergency wilderness evacuations (like broken femurs).

And they tell me that what we have is small potatoes compared with the rescue capabilities in Jackson, Wyoming. If you’re seriously injured half way up the Grand Teton or canoeing across Jenny Lake, someone can come to help you.

For most people, the goodness of things such as WFR training and wilderness search and rescue is obvious. We need no argument to convince us that it’s a good thing to stop and help those who are injured to whatever extent we are able. Few people would criticize Good Samaritan laws that encourage helping without fear of lawsuits.

Human Life is Precious

Human life is precious. It’s one of those things that, to use philosopher J. Budziszewski’s phrase, “we can’t not know.”

Yet, as Budziszewski explains in his book What We Can’t Not Know, we humans are more than capable of ignoring the truth we know. He cites St. Paul’s argument in Romans 1:18-19 and then comments, “Saint Paul doesn’t blame the pagans for not having the truth about God and His moral requirements, but for suppressing and neglecting it.”

And thus “human life is precious” in large letters gets encrusted with fine print.

Human life is precious except human life that’s unlike me and my people — ethnically, religiously, irreligiously, nationally, ideologically, by gender, by sexual orientation.

Human life is precious except “unwanted” human life in the womb or even after birth in the case of “defective” human life.

Human life is precious except human life is not old and worn out. Old and worn out? In Belgium they’re now euthanizing children as young as nine and according to bioethicist Wesley Smith, child euthanasia is under serious discussion in Canada.

Meanwhile here in Lander, the wilderness is a bit safer with forty-seven newly minted WFRs roaming the mountains — pro-life WFRs, let me add, who believe that all human life is precious and worth protecting.

But the world remains unsafe insofar as it is filled with those who with or without WFR training believe that really only some human life is precious and worth protecting. And there’s no practice scenario for dealing with that. We just need to jump in and do what we can.