Departure Day:
We Leave Tomorrow

This is the last issue of The Form & Function Brief before the Alaska expedition. We board in Vancouver tomorrow — my wife, our two daughters, and the surgeon who has spent the last ten weeks thinking in print about everything that could go wrong and how to prevent it. The gear is packed. The kit is built and organized by the triage framework we laid out in Issue 6. The layering systems have been tested in controlled conditions. The communication plan has been discussed and will be reviewed again on the morning of each excursion. The footwear decisions are made. Safety Officer Ben is ready.

What this column was actually about

What I want to say before we go is something that did not fit neatly into any single issue of this column, but that runs through all of them: the goal of all of this planning is not to eliminate risk. That is not possible in any environment worth going to. The goal is to make the risks we take deliberate rather than accidental — to choose them with clear eyes rather than stumble into them through inattention or poor preparation.

A family on a small vessel in 50-degree water in a remote Alaskan coastal environment is making a set of risk choices. The planning is about making those choices well, so that the experience on the other side of them is worth what they cost. That is the principle underneath everything in this series — the cold water physiology, the footwear decisions, the fishing injury protocols, the remote triage framework. Not fear. Respect for the environment, and preparation proportional to it.

What comes after Alaska

The Brief returns in early June with the after-action content. What worked, what needed adjusting, what the environments actually felt like against the framework we built on paper. That content will be more honest than anything in this pre-departure run, because it will be grounded in what actually happened rather than what I anticipated.

Follow along live at @formandfunctionmd. We debrief when we return.