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The single most important item in any first aid or survival kit is essential personal meds. In my case it’s a vial of Adrenalin and a syringe, as I’m deathly allergic to wasp type vermin. Just an hour ago I stepped out the cabin door and was immediately ambushed by a single yellow jacket. Immediately I started into the predictable reactions, including crazy itching all over, swelling of the throat, numbness of lips, red blister-like blotches on the skin. Over the years I’ve been bitten so many times, closing in on a hundred I’d guess, that it’s now a life-death thing. I shoot myself up with Adrenalin and in a few minutes the symptoms start subsiding … leaving me with several hours of shaking hands and jitters, not please, but at least alive. I always say, in full truth, that I hardly give a thought to bears or lions, and we have no poisonous snakes at this altitude. But yellow jackets and falling trees (we have thousands of standing dead snags after a wildfire some years ago) scare me to death.
So, the short answer is that I carry a couple of lighters, two flashlights, a small first aid kit with Adrenalin kit and aspirin (for heart attack or stroke prevention), and if there’s even a remote chance of rain, some sort of rain gear. Oh, and one of the new blood-clotting pads in case I stab myself with a broadhead, as a nonresident compounder did here a few years ago while chasing a bull with an arrow on the string. He died peacefully and alone in the woods. But he’s still dead.
