Facts+Source+9


 * 1) stronger hunter, I become a more proficient Marine, particularly in my self-sufficiency, confidence and ability to interpret a challenge from a perspective outside my own.
 * 2) self-sufficiency as a collection of individual disciplines that allows me to succeed amid the stresses of fatigue and discomfort.
 * 3) The qualities needed to spend a cold desert night watching a sliver of road from the muddy edge of a reed-filled canal are the same as those that keep a hunter silent and patient for hours in a tree stand, though everything about the wind-frozen morning he endures tells him to seek cover and warmth far from the lonely deer trail he watches
 * 4) Planning, patience and endurance are learned through repetition.
 * 5) Yet confidence still projects from this memory,
 * 6) the moment was unmarred by ambiguity or doubt. A hunt was planned, an afternoon was spent in the pursuit and the goal was achieved.
 * 7) This incident is an example of the small moments of confidence born of my hunts that built upon one another and thus, in the times when I was most challenged by fear, fatigue, homesickness and stress, provided a well, a reservoir of confidence from which I drew.
 * 8) Whether you're seeking bear along mountain slides or protecting a convoy route, any plan that doesn't account for the opponent's point of view leaves the chance of success to luck alone.
 * 9) Once in Iraq, these lessons took on a new pattern. Bedding areas, wind and food sources were replaced by weapons caches, historic IED [improvised explosive device] sites and trigger lines, the signs left by a new competitor in a much more dangerous game.
 * 10) Just as the role of the hunter and that of the warrior were one and the same in our primal past,
 * 11) when procuring and protecting a food source was central to survival, there is no clear delineation between the qualities that make me a good hunter and those that make me a good Marine.
 * 12) learned qualities of self-sufficiency, confidence, and perspective have allowed him to be a more effective marine.
 * 13) Such qualities do not come free with the purchase of a hunting license, nor, despite the myth, are they permanent characteristics of boot camp.
 * 14) Later, this same germ of self-sufficiency would serve as the start of deeper disciplines I would use as a Marine
 * 15) in the times when I was most challenged by fear, fatigue, homesickness and stress, provided a well, a reservoir of confidence from which I drew.