Week 16 has passed here at TBS. It contained two of the more important graded events of the course, the Endurance Course (E-Course) on Friday and the Land Navigation Final today (Saturday). Both events were difficult, but I passed each with high scores. I have tonight and Sunday to recover, and prepare for FEX III, which kicks off on Monday. It will be our hardest exercise of TBS. Welcome to the Infantry.
The E-Course is designed to test an officer's physical stamina and ability in a simulated combat environment. It a series of three events ran in sequence: the Obstacle Course (O-Course), Echo Trail, and the Stamina Course. The O-Course is about 300 meters of low and high obstacles that require climbing over, ducking under, and vaulting. It is a test of upper body strength and upper body stamina. It is completed by climbing a 30-ft rope. Echo Trail is about 2.5 miles, and travels relentless over (it seems) every hill in Quantico. The Stamina course is much like Echo Trail, though it is about 3 miles long and interspersed with higher obstacles every several hundred yards, including a 20-foot Jacob's ladder and a hundred-yard low-crawl course under barbed wire. With the exception of the O-Course, we must perform the whole thing with about 35 lbs of gear and a rifle. If you complete it in 60 minutes or less, you "max" it (get the highest possible score), if you take over 80 minutes, you fail. Most Marines are gasping for breath by the finish of the O-Course, only two minutes into the event...and the following 6 miles or so bring you to the edge of your endurance. Physically, it is the hardest thing I have ever done.
Final Land Nav is also strenuous, but in a different way. You are given seven hours to complete, and most people require that. In the morning, you are released into this 30-square kilometer training area, and you must be back at a pick-up spot (on the perimeter of the area) by a set time that afternoon, or you are disqualified. There are ten boxes for you to find with your compass and your map, each one (of course) worth 10% of your grade. These boxes, as before, are little red metal ammunition boxes mounted on posts, with numbers painted on them (so you can identify which ones you found). Despite their color they are hard to see - you have to get within 50 yards or so before they are visible. They are often a kilometer or more away from each other, and the terrain is very hilly, so a lot of hiking is involved. My route today took me over 10,000 meters, which does not account for the distance I covered actually searching for boxes once I found their respective general locations. A handy conversion website puts that at about 6.2 miles, which is no small distance, especially off roads and over hills. However, despite the pressure to pass and the constant hiking, I found the experience breathtaking.
Though I was superficially concerned with finding my assigned boxes (and I found all of them), I feel like I spent that time wandering awestruck in uninterrupted forest amid the climactic and glorious throes of autumn. I started the day in a twilit wood, its pale-gold leaves faintly luminous in the promise of sunrise. I have no memory of mid-day, for this late in the season the afternoon seems to begin almost immediately, so low through the sky strides the sun. Areas of mostly bare scrub bespoke the coming winter, and the occasional copse still bearing rich greenery recalled the fading summer. At some point I ate lunch at the intersection of two creeks, the veiled land rising in autumn colors about me, and as I did so it started to rain. It was a hurried, spitting, autumn rain, released in fitful bursts from the fast-scudding clouds above. The later hours of the afternoon were dominated by the slanting sunlight dodging down sporadically between clouds. As I emerged from the woods at last, I was struck by fierce slanting sunlight emanating from a rich blue sky.
How can I describe the leaves? Though most lay dead on the ground, still many of those defiantly blazed forth deep russet and red. I crunched steadily through this wreck of foliage, my breath misting before me and everything in sight seeming fragile and aflame. The approaching death of winter carried an air of tragedy, as though it were possible to be sad among such beauty, but it seemed a natural contradiction. The light, the leaves, the cool clear air, and the solitude meld into one memory of glory. It feels as though I spent today wandering in a dream.
Of all victims of the Pathetic Fallacy, I am the most willing and gullible. I am often struck by how alive the world seems at times; not so much in an independent existance, but such that it is actively interacting with me. There seems a great communication at work, mediated by God: I feel strongly that I learned something over the course of the day, nothing perhaps that can be tidily comprehended or put down in writing, but something that manifests deeper than my intellect. It will germinate slowly, no doubt, unheeded by my conscious mind, for now I must focus on other things like the upcoming FEX and my required preparations for it. Yet because of my journey today, I bend to work with a lighter heart. I am refreshed.
