I know this is an old thread, but I believe I have some insight that may be informative.
I don't even know how to start this post. I understand why he did things the way he did. I don't know if I can explain it well enough to help you guys understand too, but I think Code deserves that I at least try.
I'll start with the physical aspect of it. Code suffered from a medical condition that basically forces you to be lazy in order to have any semblance of a normal life--in more serious cases even that is out the window. Contrary to what the name implies, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is not a disease where you feel tired all the time, or become exhausted more easily than others, or need extra sleep. Rather, it's a disease of not only constant fatigue, but also after exertion there are days of...the best way I can describe it is fatigue so intensely profound that it is very extreme suffering, even at rest. It is not simply "miserable", it is beyond imagination and you're just screaming internally because the level of suffering is unfathomably high, and yet you're so weak that it's all you can do to take the next breath. It happens 24-48 hours after you exert yourself beyond your envelope of energy. This symptom is referred to as "post-exertional malaise", or PEM, and is considered by patients to be the hallmark CFS symptom. In order to avoid PEM, the person must self-limit their activities in order to avoid overexertion. While active these people appear healthy and normal, but if they do too much then the price is paid later, behind closed doors.
The situation is a perfect set-up for the patient to feel terribly lazy, day in and day out, and for the people surrounding that person to consider him lazy. Generally within the first few years of becoming ill patients will do multiple stints of pushing themselves to try to keep up with normal life, only to become sicker because of it. Each person finds they have to prove to themselves--multiple times--that this illness really can't be overcome by sheer willpower.
The thing is, for mild to moderate cases, you can do it for a little while; a day, maybe a few, before you crash. And so it becomes very important to the sufferer to be able to so something physical when they can, even though they'll pay for it later. It helps them feel like they really aren't so lazy after all. CFS is not depression; the people trapped by it are still eager to be active and fulfill their dreams, even the veterans.
By the time this story unfolded, Code was definitely a veteran at the illness. He knew his body's physical limits. The part about him being in bed for 2-3 days a month is very telling, because it means that he was so disciplined about his energy expenditure that only once a month he gave himself the luxury of pushing past his energy limits and then suffering the PEM that followed. Shoveling the driveway is a classic example. Can you imagine being so desperate to physically accomplish something that shoveling a driveway even when there's no need is enjoyable and worth the days of bedridden agony that would surely follow?
I can. I do. In my mind, that's perfectly reasonable and understandable.
Survival courses would have been out of the question--even if he could afford it, which it doesn't look like he could, the issue is that he could only expend a certain carefully allotted amount of energy and be at it only for a few days or less before he would crash. The way survival courses are set up he'd have likely ended up either being considered so lazy that they boot him out or being medivac'ed out because he'd exceed his limits and collapse with PEM. This line of thinking would seem silly to healthy people who knew him because he'd seem so normal otherwise, but that's only because people with CFS are usually very careful to make sure their PEM is a private experience.
So why would he intentionally place himself in survival situations when a medical condition excluded him from taking survival courses?
Well, survival courses were out of the question mainly because someone else would be in charge, dictating the tasks and the pace of the course. Code going out solo meant that he could strategize and plan for how to work around his limits, budget his energy properly, and he could rest as often as was needed. For someone with CFS those things make a considerable difference, so much so that a 4 day solo trip may have well been within his physical capabilities to get home before he crashed whereas a 4 day survival course was probably not even close.
At this point I'm reading over this post so far and realizing just how hard to believe this all must be for you healthy folks. As you've probably guessed by now, I, too, have CFS. I also know many others with this condition. I assure you, what I'm sharing here is not conjecture, but rather seeing the article through the lens of CFS 101. I've read the stories, I've known the people, and I've analyzed myself...what I'm sharing are just the basic things that are obvious to me and would be to any other CFS veteran who reads the article. I had been reading these threads before I could find the article, and became familiar with the events just from reading the comments, but when someone mentioned "CFS" suddenly it all made sense to me. And when I finally found the article I read it and wept. It's so clear to me why he did what he did in the way he did it, and it hits very close to home.
Finally I can get to the aspect of his excursion that has been discussed the most: his lack of back-ups such as tent, sleeping bag, cell phone, etc. The point was made here that people should practice survival skills in a safe manner and become experienced before betting their life on those skills. That reasoning is sound and I am not going to argue otherwise.
However, for the sake of discussion, here's some counter-reasoning from a CFS perspective. First of all any extra weight, even the most ultralight options, means more energy expenditure, which means less of a safety buffer of emergency energy to get home before crashing (read: collapsing with PEM).
Second, he could very well have decided that if rescue was needed he'd rather die than call in help. The medical community generally does not "believe" in CFS because their tests can't find anything majorly wrong, so there's a good chance that if he had been rescued it would be concluded (as many here have implied) that he was mentally ill and a danger to himself. While CFS is a neurological disease and causes difficulty thinking clearly and also short-term memory issues, patients have been shown to be mentally competent and are regularly cleared by psychologists as having no mental health issues. Even so, there have been multiple instances of someone with CFS being locked up in a mental facility simply because no physical cause could be found for their symptoms and subsequent behavior. That scenario is the worst possible nightmare of anyone with CFS and the general consensus is that we'd rather die than be locked up. It's more common in the UK than here, but if Code was at all familiar with any of the online patient groups during his decade of CFS he would have heard wind of the stories.
There's a final aspect of this....why he didn't take a sleeping bag or tent as backup...that I'm not sure I can explain but I will try. Has anyone here read any survival stories where the person accredits adrenaline to their survival? Or even more specifically, they wouldn't have been able to do _____ except for there was no other way and they knew that if they didn't succeed in doing ____ they would die, and somehow knowing they
had to do it made them capable of doing the practically impossible? I strongly suspect that Code was relying on that kind of gumption to make his trip feasibly possible. That is, he would not have had the same fortitude and level of adrenaline sustaining him if camping gear was available as an easy out.
From everything I can see Mr. Code knew his physical limits very well and was playing right on the very edge of safety as far as exertion goes, but unfortunately his lack of wilderness experience and his errors caught up to him.
It is very possible that he had the mindset going out that death wouldn't be such a bad thing. Living with CFS can't really be called living--it's more like existing. I can't explain it without sounding all depressing and dramatic so I won't try. Suffice to say the desire to challenge yourself is very strong, and suicide is a leading cause of death for those with CFS. Put those two together and you get something like this. You'd think the medical community would wonder why a specific group of people with clear physical symptoms and a psychiatric clean bill of health are killing themselves. As an example, people who have been though cancer and chemo who have also endured CFS say that they would prefer the cancer and its effects any day, if that gives you some idea of the magnitude of the suffering. And there is no known cure, no method of relief.
The reason Code didn't let on about his suffering or tell people the name of his condition is obvious: it invites ridicule. People don't believe it, including doctors, and instead often heap on verbal abuse.
I'm sharing all of this here because it sounds like you all genuinely want to understand why he did what he did in the way that he did it, and I feel that Code deserves to have this perspective shared.
If anyone would like to read the article it can be read in full
here (scroll down). If anyone is interested in reading factual information about CFS (as opposed to wikipedia and CDC info) the Canadian Consensus Criteria is an excellent place to start, you'll find it in
this PDF starting on page 11.
I'd say that I'd be happy to answer questions but I feel pretty vulnerable posting this much and depending on the responses might find it all too stressful. This post has exhausted me and I need to go rest.
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