How does one write a love letter to an experience, to a group of people whom will likely never be together again but walked away from our time together changed humans?
And that is a NOLS course for you.
We spend intimate weeks together in a community we forged and made the rules for; no contact with the outside world. We cry together, laugh together, poop together, are scared together, are delighted together, and many times are the truest versions of ourselves. Often we discover depths of ourselves that we didn’t even know existed in the other world, how shocking that can be to witness.
And then we all get on a bus one day and say goodbye and are expected to just be ok?
We put on our best masks and walk around like the dead for awhile, our animal bodies never fully forgetting what it feels like to be free. I think most of us that lead expeditions are folks that are forever chasing that feeling,
When you return back to your respective lives after an expedition you get the age old question; “how was your trip?!” and folks are expecting certain answers. “It was good, so fun and I saw some really cool things. I learned a lot and met some really cool people.” Easy yeah ? But that answer can often feel unsatisfying to those of us who are scrambling to put something into words that simply cannot be expressed by them.
There were 8 of us on this course, 6 students just leaving high school and me and Eli instructing for 31 days. If expeditions have taught me anything it’s that first impressions are bullshit so much of the time, I can hardly ever guess correctly on who I will connect with the most or how my instructor team will work together. 8 is a small number, it’s intimate and the outdoors is a container for connection and community; we became close to quick with nothing to hide behind or distract from the curiosity we feel towards each other.
Moving through the canyons is not the most challenging in navigation, so much of the time you are in the canyons bottom, counting drainages and features. The mesa top can be more challenging, with endless Juniper and Pinyon stretching into the horizon, the deserts version of an endless sea. The tricky part with the canyons can be entry and exit points; finding the places where are bodies can scramble in and out of the bottom. 3rd, 4th, 5th class terrain, crumbling sandstone, pack hauls, pour overs; as an instructor our favorite things to navigate because it feels like a puzzle our brain has to solve and execute with our bodies. And our maps are helpful to try and predict where the best spot will be but not certain; contour lines are 40 ft apart and 40 ft is enough unknown.
Rocks; we touch them all day, walk on them, sleep under them, cook on them, use them to hold our tents up. Navajo sandstone, Kayenta formation, Wingate sandstone; our constant companions along the Cedar Mesa. We play games naming all the shapes we see, curse and struggle to haul our tired bodies over them, and thank them as they offer us a non-sandy place to lay.
It rained. It rained a lot (historically if you read the news). Oh yeah and we didn’t bring rain pants and one of our students forgot her rain jacket somehow. We had days we couldn’t move, as we watched the desert turn into something unfamiliar and students tents flooded and filled with water running across the slick rock. At least we never struggled to find drinking water although much of our water was very, very sandy. It is surprising how quickly you don’t care about the water you drink when living under the big sky.
“I don’t know how you can live outside so much and be away from home, it sounds like so much work”
And it is many days. Hauling water up, your clothes and feet are wet a lot, your pack is heavy, washing dishes is harder, nothing is convenient, and your hands usually hurt for any number of reasons.
and, and, and,
You watch the sun and moon rise and set every day, you fall asleep laughing with someone you have come to love, you witness 20 life changing things before leaving camp, drink something hot, and ponder what it means to be a human on this planet each day as you navigate what is set out in front of you.
How does that sound?
NOLS courses are progressive, which means that it is not a guided trip at all but a learning experience. We teach, support, supply the tools and facilitation but students are leading our days and planning our routes as we step back more and more. Eventually this leads up to an opportunity for them to go on an independent expedition without us instructors, which is actually pretty wild. We were able to send our folks on a 6 day independent expedition at the end of this course which did include a Halloween meet up with us for a costume party and trick or treating.
And I just think its really special that although our course was filled with so much rain, waist deep quicksand on the daily, heavy packs, cold nights, loose rocks, working and moving every day;
All we could do was laugh and laugh and wonder and play and share ourselves under the milky way.
Oh yeah and I just remembered that this is a job I do. But I never really was good at being casual in that area. There is a certain magic that exists in what I think of as the real world (the world without walls and doors) and each expedition I am part of I think I capture a little bit more of it in myself. The thing with this magic is it is really hard to bring back with you, the world we have created out here works very hard to hide that magic from you. When I was 20 and went on my first expedition I experienced the magic for the first time, now I am doomed or honored to chase that for as long as I can. I don’t think I have a choice in that matter if I want to maintain my sanity.
My students and lovely co-instructor are onto the next part of their experience, climbing and my heart feels weird on its own.
So this is my love letter to them.
