Outward Bound
December of 2008 found me out of school, persona non grata as a matter a fact, and with really no direction in my life at all. So I ended up in the catch all for upper middle class children with no drive, community college. Did I still want to be a history teacher, did I have what it takes to get through college, these were the thoughts that occupied me everyday. The resounding answers were probably not and no, respectively. Then one day my salvation came in the form of a totally real, I swear, degree called Outdoor Education and Leadership at Central Wyoming College. "I can major in camping, I can do that" I thought to myself. I decided that I needed to sample outdoor education and see if it was for me, so I enrolled in the Outward Bound Alaska Semester. Not only was it for me, but I discovered what is now my passion, wilderness education and I hope to one day teach for Outward Bound.
Section One
The first section of my fifty day Outward Bound semester consisted of expedition style rafting. We put in at the intersection of AK 1 and Little Nelchina State Recreation Area Road and terminated well over 150 miles away outside of Cordova AK. We rafted the Little Nelchina, the Nelchina, the Tazlina River, and the Copper River. To Cross Tazlina Lake we lashed our rafts together and fashioned sails from traps and masts from fallen trees. After Arriving in Cordova we helped build a pier and spray painted stenciled reminders to not pollute the water, on sewer grates. I had some rafting experience on the New and Gauley rivers so while I did learn a lot about rafting during this section what I learned most was how to live in close quarters with total strangers. All day we paddled, playing games, talking or just watching as the snow covered peaks of the Wrangell Saint Elias Mountains drifted by. In the evening we ate and talked, and then went to bed. We slept in north face tents who seemed to shape shift, one day it felt spacious, and the next it seemed like I was sleeping on top of the person next to me. Most days I spent less than ten minutes out of arms reach of someone. The only reprieve was a trip to the bathroom.
Section Two
Section two consisted of sea kayaking from Valdez to Whittier via the Columbia Glacier, Grizzly Island, the Axl islands, Perry Island, and the Nellie Juan Glacier. By this time our group had gotten past the awkwardness that forced cohabitation creates and was enjoying a very short lived honeymoon period. That all ended on an exceedingly muddy beach near the Columbia Glacier. Yelling and screaming back and forth between the only two females on our trip and a graduate of George Washington University. He was the kind of guy you wanted to like, and who seemed like a genuinely good person but instead for some reason every time he suggested you do extra work you just want to smack him in the face with a paddle, unfairly. One of our instructors was a migrant Outward Bound instructor with some sort of serious illness I cant remember, and tramp stamp of a mexican tarantula, named Smoker. The other was a getting a doctorate in holistic medicine in Washington state, and felt obliged to inject her opinion into every conversation, to her credit she always had something interesting to add.
Section Three
The third and final section of my Outward Bound semester was the mountaineering section, the one I was most eager for. We set out for the Snow River Glacier but to get there we had to cross a smaller glacier, a snow bridge over a deep chasm filled will frothing whitewater, and be lowered down a steep pass. Once those hurdles were cleared we found ourselves camped on a rock formation beside the Snow River Glacier. Here we took our solo, a forty-eight hour fast, spent alone journaling. We made camp on the Snow River Glacier, and a day later made our summit push for Mount Mystic. I lead until we got steeped out and had to turn around, Rob led the second half and eventually was the first to summit. The view was spectacular. We headed back down to camp and the rest of the section was a blur. Everyone was excited to see if our instructors had deemed us mature enough for an unsupervised final.
Final
And they had! We set off as a group with our instructors hiking up the other valley where they would be out of sight and miles away but at least in the mountains if something happened. We did a little loop, hit some peaks, saw a fancy mountain man's house, got lost, and in general just relaxed. We were so close to the end. We were once strangers but now it seemed like we had known each other forever. We laughed, some of us cried, we even yelled a little. We were family. All good things must end, and end it did. We hiked out and went back to base camp where we made delicious garlic salmon and reminisced. I can truly say that I loved every single one of those people. We headed to the Exit Glacier where we graduated and got our Outward Bound pins. Then we retired to Anchorage where we had a hell of a time and sent everyone off with a hearty goodbye.