For as long as humans have ventured beyond the edges of settled life, the wilderness has demanded a kind of knowledge that civilization tends to let atrophy. An emergency medicine physician draws a quiet but urgent line between the graves of Oregon Trail travelers in the 1840s and the risks facing modern hikers today, reminding us that the conditions of the frontier have changed while the fragility of the human body has not. The lesson is neither romantic nor alarmist — it is simply the oldest one: those who prepare, survive.