The best thing I've done this week is learn how to suture a wound

Flickr/Trekking Rinjani

A hiker at the top of Mount Rinjani

On Tuesday in the small storefront of the Best Made Company in Tribeca, a young ER doctor spent two hours leading a room full of professional New Yorkers in slicing open, and then suturing closed, a dozen pigs feet. Field Medicine: Suturing Workshop, it was called.

By nine o'clock, the room was relatively comfortable in the principles of stitching up flesh, in the event that any one of us find ourselves deep in the woods and in desperate need of medical attention.

I was there because of my interest in the quaint economy, the marketing of an antiquated lifestyle as aspirational (and generally expensive), not because I had any intention of ever cutting myself while alone in the deep wilderness. But I strangely found myself with the most experience of anyone in the class. I guess I hurt myself a lot.

Sutures? Had them plenty of times: in my face as a child, inside my mouth as a teenager, and most recently along the length of my left thumb after I broke it.

Staples? Yep, once in the back of my head after an unfortunate play-wrestling match.

Skin glue? Sure, that's how my last surgical scar was closed.

About halfway through the class I realized knowing a bit about suturing is a lot more relevant to my life than I had ever realized. I embraced the quaint economy. I was even sort of excited about hiking through the wilderness? There's nothing like standing in a room full of shiny $300 axes to make you feel like maybe a rugged lifestyle is pretty chic.

I found myself aspiring to the outdoors. Or at least purchase a hunting jacket for a theoretical wilderness escape from the cacophony of the city sometime in the undefined future.

Whoever figured out that this was the way to get young urban professionals to open their wallets is a genius.