"She was standing at the periphery of her own life, sharing a fridge and a toilet, a shallow intimacy, with people she did not know at all. People who lived in exclamation points. "Great!" they said often. "That's great!" People who did not scrub in the shower; their shampoos and conditioners and gels were cluttered in the bathroom, but there was not a single sponge, and this, the absence of a sponge, made them seem unreachably alien to her (p.156).... There was something unquestioning about her roommates' lives, an assumption of certainty that fascinated her, so that they often said, 'Let's go get some," about whatever it was they needed - more beer, pizza, buffalo wings, liquor - as though this getting was not an act of money (p.157)... The world was wrapped in gauze; she could see the shapes of things but not clearly enough, never enough (p.160)." - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah
Going out into nature feels like venturing into the "real world" and unwrapping the gauze of the everyday luxuries. This gauze can hold me hostage from experiencing how life really operates, causing me to feel an empty kind of captivity by that white noise of routine and sense of expectation of the present and future. With the students out in the desert, it seems that substance abuse is a response to feeling like they couldn't meet parents' expectations, coping with a divorce, a death, and wanting to escape their own memories and thoughts. Going into the desert is like going into the deep end, sharing emotions, digging up realizations, and working out who you are within the backdrop of the natural, unpredictable forces surrounding you. It is sobering to me; it is my therapy.
***
In the desert, there is so much sage surrounding us all the time. We walk over it, step on it, smell it, use it's branches to make wooden spindles and fire boards to bust a fire. To bust a fire, you need a bow (a juniper branch with cordage tied from top to bottom) which you lodge a spindle (thin, long, piece of sage wood) into by twisting it in the cordage. Then you carve a small hole in the fire board (a larger, round trunk of sage wood) in which you lodge the spindle and slowly move your bow bow back and forth, back and forth, backandforth, backnforth - faster, faster, faster - until, your spindle starts driving out smoke from the fireboard - more and more smoke! Faster and faster, until, you create and ember. You then place this ember into a little nest of dried sage bark and pieces. You move your hand, holding the smoldering nesting (with a fire glove on), in a figure eight motion, allowing the wind to potentially ignite that nesting, eventually blowing into it, until you finally see a flame. There you have it: you have made fire, without a match or a lighter, but with force, and with the help of some sage and juniper.
It's hard. It doesn't happen right away for most people and I don't even like the process very much! When a student gets a fire, they begin to tally them. If they get 15 fires, they can earn a flashlight. During introductions, students often include the number of fires they've made and miles they've walked. I've busted just one, with the coaching of two students. But this serves as a key metaphor out there for hard work and success - turning embers into flames.
"Ah, a Juniper berry.... Let the gin-making begin!" said one of the boys, imitating some kind of British-type accent, making me laugh, as he looked at one tiny periwinkle Juniper berry on a branch in front of him. He's been out there for 6 or 7 weeks, sitting with his thoughts, entertaining the group with his stories - choosing to identify himself as a drug addict, to his own surprise. Despite regular use and selling, he had never thought to identify himself as an addict, but more as just a high school kid and then college freshman. He took Honors Philosophy in high school and read the 1500 pages of Atlas Shrugged, similar to another one of the group members. Yet drugs had been taking over his brain and he has only now realized that he can digest more words of a book than he has been able to in years.
We walked through the sage to a dried-up lake bed to play Ultimate Frisbee and then Capture the Flag. The earth out there is so cracked, stepped on by herds of cows - and baby cows! - drinking from the small puddle of a lake in the middle, into which dried up cow patties and rocks are thrown. Afterwards, we sit under a Juniper tree where one of the boys begins to lead a group surrounding one of his therapy assignments to write a letter of accountability for everything he's done. Some of the others checked in, sharing their feelings, thanking us staff for the games, saying, "I forgot I could have fun while sober." Then the student begins to read aloud his letter, where he states everything that he's done that has brought him to this place - DUIs, lying, drinking, etc. Everyone listens and everyone gives feedback, noting areas where he could say more and areas where we all can relate. As we speak, we play with the earth, the cow shit, and the plants that surround us. We thank him for sharing and the group is closed; we head back to camp.
On the way back, I converse with another student - about his family, how he was bullied from a young age, how he owns three cars and crashed one in a suicide attempt, how he began drinking when he lost his sports scholarship. We get into camp and the dinner cycle begins. We begin by washing our hands and feet - I sit on a log using my pocketknife to clean up the backs of my heals which have layer upon layer of dried skin. I walk back to the fire, sit back in my crazy creek (outdoor chair) and watch and listen around me of busting of fire, boiling of water, cutting of vegetables - joking, reading, frustration, laughing - carving of spoons, writing, drawing... whatever it is that they are working on around me. I feel like life is fresh again - reduced to its most basic parts: relationships, surviving, and growing.
We are then left with the fire, as the night sky moves into a navy blue tone. We acknowledge the people and things that we love (family, yoga pants, the ocean), share resentments (the cold, addiction), people who need our amends, say what we did well today and what we could do better tomorrow - we share how we're feeling. Then we put our packs back on, walk out to the tarps in the sage and tied to Juniper trees that are serving as shelters. My co-leader picks up the guitar and starts singing Johnny Cash, Radiohead, Phantom of the Opera, and ends with a Cowboy tune that incorporates Coyote sounds. Four of the boys join us in the center of the sage stage, in the middle of the desert, and begin to do "ballet" - throwing their arms up in the arm, resembling a quartet of syncronized swimmers out of the water, finding themselves on the land - no longer drowning - high on life. I laugh and smile and laugh and smile, but don't sing - just take in the growing night sky and the shadows of the mountains and the sounds of play.
"Goodnight! And remember... Oregon....
(and this is where there is disagreement)
HATES (some yell)
LOVES (some yell)
YOU!"
I seal myself up in my sleeping bag, take one final look up at the big dipper, and bury my head inside. Goodnight, goodnight and goodnight to this crazy unpredictable world.
Sometimes class feels filled with tedious questions about protocol, whereas, in one of my more adventure-related classes this was typed on one of the slides:
No rules works all the time.
Too much planning stresses me out. I asked my brother for directions to where he and my family were on the Cape one time and he said, "Follow signs for The Cape." When I drive somewhere, I just need to know the routes or the general direction - not every left or right turn. Sometimes it feels like people are saying, "So, what if there's no street sign at the intersection, but there hasn't been a sign that says we need to turn right for the same route? Do we still go straight?" YES! KEEP GOING!
If there's a detour, should we follow it?
If we turn down a street, and there's a dead end, should we try to keep going?
What if the light is not turning green, but it's night time, and no other cars are around? Should we go?
What if I'm holding a coffee and eating a sandwich, is it okay to take my hands off the wheel for a second?
If the speed limit is 65, would I get a ticket if I go 67? What if everyone is doing 80?
Sometimes there is an obvious answer - YES FOLLOW THE DETOUR - and other times there is not. This is where ethics comes in and some conversations involving ethical decisions are more interesting than others. What if your client's girlfriend is standing outside with a gun, and the police say they can't do anything unless something happens, do you let them leave? One of my professors did.
This same professor said that one of her big breakthroughs was when she realized that the clients she was working with had lives. When I sit in class, I can imagine one can get so caught up in organizing that they the bigger picture.
Meanwhile, back in Adventure Therapy class, I lost $2.10. An auction was being run by my professor. What were we bidding on? A $1.00 bill. The winner takes all, but the second and third place people still have to pay. What? Right. Best game ever to play if you're a professor. You could go home with a little extra at the end of the class.
He started with a $1.00. For the first round, three people played, eventually bidding $1.00. What happens is that when you're bidding, you get to a point where you can't afford to lose. Or, you start thinking, "Well, I'd rather lose $.50 than $.75, if I get the $1.00." The other problem is that, you're not exempt unless you were the fourth person bidding. The next round was an auction of $3.00. I was at $2.10 when I decided to stop, but the other two people kept going until $3.55. The person who won actually lost $.50, but that's less than my $2.10. The second place person was the biggest loser: $3.50 or something like that.
Human behavior. What would YOU do? Rather than sit and ask question after question, we play games. Games quietly pull us out of our social selves and might begin to scratch away at our true selves. Family dynamics come out as everyone is absorbed in an activity. Suddenly your favorite uncle is pushing you out of the way to get a touchdown, your mom is changing the rules so that she doesn't lose, and your normally silent friend has proven himself the smartest in the room. I read a quote from Plato once that said, "You can learn more about a person in an hour of play than a year of conversation." We get so caught up in the game, we drop our cover.
Apparently my professor facilitated this same activity with a corporate group at a conference and ended up with $580 at the end. What? Yes. He gave it to the service crew and they had the most awesome beerfest the last night. Where did my money go? To a student/friend who went to a conference over the weekend. If only all gambled money went towards charity.
Life is about values. We speed because we're keeping up with traffic, we go through red lights because it's night and no one is around, we text while we're driving because we care about communication. Values are constantly being juggled and balanced: THAT'S LIFE. It's one big grayscale, but that's what makes it so captivating... so stop talking about the rules and trying to organize everything, people....
After reviewing some of the syllabus, my professor walked towards the cardboard boxes in the center of the room. They were taped up with addresses and stamps, wrapped with white plastic tape all around them. He asked if anyone had a knife. Surrounded by outdoor education students, it was surely inevitable.
"If I cut myself, I suspect we have some people with the medical qualifications to help me." he said, as he began to use someone's pocketknife.
"You're going to give us the books?" asked a student.
"I'm not going to give them to you, you're going to take them." said the professor.
Upon breaking the seals, he returned to his seat. "The retail value of these is $40." he said, pausing, as he often does between sentences. He sits with his arms calmly placed on each chair rest of the chairs next to him, in this circle we're all apart of. His burnt orange t-shirt has a logo on the back for a mountain club and he's wearing Chacos around his feet. Without any pretenses or judgments, he speaks intentionally. Every word seems to be weighted with value and engages each person. "But the Publisher sells them to me for $20."
"I know that a lot of people have invested in me." He goes on to tell the story of why he ended up in this field. We begin to see that 37 years of research and experience have gone into this book.
The room is quiet as we contemplate the boxes of books. "Now, if you take a book, you get to choose the remuneration." He then gets out of his chair and walks towards the books. "You could do this." He picks one up and walks back to his desk. "You could pick up a book and sit down." Then, he returns to the books and hesitates before asking, "Or - does anyone have, a lot of money on them?" To this, everyone smiles, perhaps thinking it's an ironic question for a group of college students, but a girl happens to have a $50 bill on her. "Now see, she could take that, get a book, and put the money in, and return to her seat." His voice doesn't let on that there is a right answer, as most facilitator voices often sound like.
By the end of class, everyone has a book. Some just took one, another put in a note and a $20 bill, another explained he would give according to the value he thought it should have (after reading it), and I? Well, he already gave me a copy last year when I sat in on his class. I told him this, to which he asked, "Why do you think I gave you one?" "Because I think you believe in it and you want to share your knowledge. But I was thinking I'd pay you back."
He allowed us to make our own meaning, which people do all the time in the realms of this field. People quickly create metaphors for their own life and choose the value of their experience. An element on the ropes course or challenge in nature (such as hiking up a steep mountain) turn into analogies for how they deal with struggle, how they perceive a problem, or how they communicate effectively with the people around them. Yesterday, my group drew analogies from the Spider's Web to learning a difficult (German) piece of music (they were a choral group). Here, our professor allowed us to put our own monetary value on something, or not - and here I am building a metaphor from that situation to my experience within experiential education. The challenge is to bring the learning from those novel experiences to how we handle our daily routines and how we integrate them with our "normal" selves.
Welcome to Adventure Therapy. Let the games begin.
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