Out of Captivity : Surviving 1,967 Days in the Colombian Jungle

124 OUT OF CAPTIVITYI knew that at some point, I was going to have to dig pretty deep, so Ifigured why not reach inside and see what I had right away?In the jungle, I needed to set my bullshit detector on “self” and stripaway the many layers that had built up during my precaptivity days. Iknew that the standard operating procedure of before was not the SOPthat would get us through this. Course corrections were the order ofthe day and it was going to take some time to get our bearings beforewe started to plot out where we needed to head next. I tried to lookat the silence as one of those right, hard things, something that hadto be done, even if it added to my stress. I’d gotten through the brutalboot camp at Parris Island when I was in the Marines, and foundthe mental discipline that we leathernecks had to develop or risk gettingbooted from the corps. I’d also spent hundreds of hours tearingdown and rebuilding various aircraft and aircraft systems in my timein the Marines and as a reservist. Knowing that what you were doingcould make the difference between a flight crew and others onboardliving and dying, you refined your ability to focus and to shut outdistractions.The mind is a funny thing, but the longer I lay there, the more Ilearned I could control my thoughts as long as I filtered out the distractions.Maybe it was the messed-up physical condition that allowed meto just lie so still for so long, but having some time to reflect was goodfor me. When I was a kid or even later as an adult, if I had a problem,I’d go off by myself into the woods or wherever else I could be alone tosort things out. My hooch became my sanctuary, even though I couldbarely fit in it.A lot of this reflection centered around the thing that had gotten meinto this mess—my job. Tom and I had several conversations about thisduring the march. We both loved our jobs and what they enabled us todo for our families, but there was no way around the truth: If it weren’tfor the money, we wouldn’t have been in Colombia. We were makinggood coin, and that was important to us—what it bought us, what it