A moment that changed me: I had a heart attack at 37 – so I went to live in a cave

I wanted to heal and thought the Colorado wilderness was the best place to do it. So I began six months of hunting and foraging, with a pile of leaves for a bed

Two days before I had a heart attack in February 2017, I had just got back from Alaska, where I’d been leading an expedition. At home in Colorado, I thought the chest pains were to do with the change in altitude. I was 37, and active. I’d been in the Marine Corps until 2011, then I became a wilderness and survival skills guide. I was training for a 245km ultramarathon through the Peruvian jungle. Even when I got to hospital, I struggled to believe I was having a heart attack, but I was rushed into an operating room and a stent was fitted.

When I came out of hospital three days later, I could barely walk and was put into cardiac rehab with a group of 85-year-olds. But I believed I needed something else to heal me. As an outdoors guy who could make stone tools and live off the land, I knew that was where I needed to be. And so, after several rehab sessions, I thought, “I’m out of here!” and went to live in a cave, near where I could hunt animals and drink from streams.

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