Expedition Journal: The Next Generation Reflects on the Natural World

2009-09-30T23:00:00.000-07:00

no. 4

spring/summer 2009

Credits

2009-09-30T22:00:00.000-07:00

Expedition Journal

No. 4

Editor in Chief:
R. Gerard Lester
gerard@greatoutdoorsacademy.org

Editor:
Patrick Munson

Photography: Noah Goetsch Berch, Morgan Lyon, Daniel Silverman, Shelby Turner, Tom Vogt, Taylor Welch

Layout:
Patrick Munson, Gerard Lester

Subscriptions and Correspondence:
magazine@GreatOutdoorsAcademy.org, or

Great Outdoors Academy
4724 NE 14th Ave
Portland, Or 97211

THE EXPEDITION JOURNAL publishes writing, photography and
illustration from the next generation of naturalists and adventure
writers. Submissions from writers and artists 19 and younger are
accepted year-round. All work is subject to editing for clarity and
audience. Visit GreatOutdoorsAcademy.org/magazine
for more submission guidelines.

Great Outdoors Academy is a 501c3 non-profit organization. We depend on your help to continue our work of connecting young people with the outdoors through expeditionary learning and the expressive arts. If you like what you see here, please consider investing in our mission with a tax-deductible donation using the attached envelope, or by donating online at www.GreatOutdoorsAcademy.org.

The Expedition Journal is made possible by generous investment from the following individuals and organizations:

Dianne and Martin Barrett

Robert and Nell Bonaparte

Bruce and Barbara Browning

Laurel Butman

Bronwen Calver

Amy McAdams and Craig Clark

Craig Cook

James and Anne Crumpacker

Mike and Lucy Davis

Carol Browning Dumke

Kristen and Patrick Ell

Cherish and Melody Erickson

Steven Charles Evans

Eduardo Fernandez

Merritt Frey

Frank and Karen Gazzo

Christie Holte

Cully and Olaf Holte

Debra Hummel

Chad Johnson and Dolly Rauh

Al Jones

Mr and Mrs Leon L. Jones

Balaji and Pat Krishnamurthy

Colleen Lester

J. Kevin and Judy Lester

Michael T. Sanders Catering

David A. Neale

Mr and Mrs. Timmothy Payne

Dave Soloos

Greg and Erin Sullivan

Kathleen Tyler

Alice VanFleet

James and Penny Verdick

Andrew Wilde

Curtis and Sheila Williams

Columbia Sportswear

Every Day Wine

Greg Sullivan Photography

Leotta Gordon Foundation

Mountain Hardware

New Seasons Market

Nike Matching Funds

Patagonia

Portland Regional Arts & Culture Council

X Mission Internet

Special thanks to the faculty and staff of:

Mt. Scott Learning Center

Youth Employment Institute

New Avenues For Youth

Island View Treatment Center

From the Editor

2009-09-30T21:00:00.000-07:00

What I have found most interesting about much of the writing and images we have received for the current issue the Expedition Journal is the internal, subjective experience of adventure. What one explorer sees and experiences in the wilderness is a unique, personal and--I’ll dare to say it—a spiritual expression of discovery.

When we began asking for writing from young people across the country, what we imagined we would be seeing is a lot of poems about spring flowers in the high country. Instead, what we notice with pleasure is that our writers and artists turn inward, noticing the direct and subtle changes that travel, place and adventure bring to their own lives.

One writer who had impressed me with his ability to connect the world around him with personal landscape is John Landretti, whose work I had read in Orion magazine. When I asked, John very kindly agreed to write a piece for our “My Wild Youth” department, and sent us “Surf,” an intense and personal account of his own early years of exploring the world around him, armed with the sense of amazement that youth gives us all.

That said, I’m enormously proud of the will risk that our young writers in this issue are taking in sharing their stories with you. The act of recording and publishing your personal experience is a political, risky, challenging, wild thing to do. It takes sweat to crank out and polish the words, and it takes guts to put your name on it.

These young writers see and report with fresh eyes the world unfolding before them as they set off on a lifetime of adventure. They share with you what is too important to keep locked only in memories. And when they look back thirty years on, as Mr. Landretti has done, I suspect that they will recall their early exploits with the vivid, creative clarity that only the passing of time can bring to a good story.

The Expedition Journal has set out to cast a wider net, and will continue to seek work from schools, outdoor education programs and individual adventurers from around the world. Thanks for reading.

Sincerely,

R. Gerard Lester
Executive Director
Great Outdoors Academy

Contributors

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Tom Vogt is passionate about the wilderness and environmental science, He also enjoys soccer, cooking, gardening, and reading, and will attend Whitman College next year. Tom is presently interning at the Audubon Society’s Wildlife Care Center.

Katie Rowlett is a sophomore at Greensboro Day School in North Carolina. She loves writing fantasy-fiction and playing violin, and she hopes someday to travel around the world.

Alex Page is a junior at Grady High School in Atlanta, Georgia. His favorite adventure in life was a 100 mile backpacking trip on the Appalachian Trail.

Indigo Grady is a junior at Atkins High School in Winston Salem, NC, and an alum of The Outdoor Academy in North Carolina. His favorite experience was a trekking and sea kayaking trip near Haines, Alaska.

Daniel Silverman is a sophomore at Pacific Crest Community School in Portland, OR. He is an avid photographer and shares his work from last summer’s GOA expedition on the coastal trail from Hoh River to Third Beach.

Caitie Baglien is an incoming freshman at St Mary’s High School in Portland, OR. She has written poetry for many years, with her experiences with nature as a central theme.

Andrew Stellfrug is a student at Youth Employment Institute. He likes to be out in the wild and experience new things. One day he hopes to travel around the entire world and hopes that other people can have outdoor experiences like he has.

Julina Brooks, AKA Liyna, is a student at YEI. Her favorite adventure was her camping trip with her father when she was younger. She loves to draw Japanese Mange comics, but also likes to write about her adventures in the great outdoors.

John Landretti is a writer whose interests include the literary essay, poetry, and the novel. His work has appeared in a number of literary presses and anthologies. His essays have been featured most regularly in Orion magazine. John currently lives in Minnesota with his wife and two young sons.

Eddie Friedman is a senior at Catlin Gabel School in Portland, OR. He is active in outdoor program outings and an accomplished mountaineer and rock climber.

Sol Milne is a student at Brentwood College School, a boarding school in British Columbia, where he is active in the outdoor program.

Notes from the Field

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GOA’s young adventurers reflect on their time in the wild.

The elements, the senses,
My sight

The stony path,
Shaped like the raging waterfall.

Scents of pine, oak, and fir
But also decay
Awakening my fear
A fear so real I can taste
The ashes of its aftermath.

Hotter than the sun on my neck
And infinitely colder
Than the moonless night.

–Anonymous

An Otter Tale

When I lived in Rockaway, Oregon,
I found a trail that led to a pond.
One day, there were two otters
swimming.

I watched them for a bit.
Came back the next day
And watched them for hours.
After a while, I got into the water
with them. They stared at me.

The otters were as black as night
With dark eyes that pierced your soul
But were peaceful like the ocean on a
hot night
With a cool breeze and the stars out.
The water was calm
I swam
They swam next to me
I felt like nothing could happen.
Like the world wasn’t there.
Just sound, just love.

–andrew Stellfrug

Beautiful Rain

Touching my back with your gentle hand.

Showering me with your tears

Replacing my pain with your dampness.

Bringing us back together again.

Showing me it’s okay to cry.

–Musu Conteh

Dear River,

First, I will thank you for the adventure that would not have been possible without you. Also, for being such a good sport about all the people who are careless about your health and well- being. I’m sorry you have to tolerate so much gunk and junk and I wish everyone would be as environmentally conscious as those GOA
expedition-ers.

Thank you for being a worthy host of all the plants and animals we saw (and to us), which helped to make the journey informative and worthwhile. For still being beautiful after years of undesirable treatment and circumstances, and for your strength and persistence, thank you.

Lastly, thank you for leading us through a safe and sunny trip. Thanks for flowing quickly when we were tired, and for slowing down when we just wanted to watch the fascinating wildlife drift past. Thank you for bringing a different experience to my life and for offering a new outlook around each curve.

Sincerely,
Lydia Smith

Julina Brooks

Growing up, I never really had the chance to go camping, or even spend much time outside, for that matter.

The first time I went camping was June of 2003, a year after my mom passed away. My dad talked about camping 24/7. He was always telling me how much my mom wanted to go camping at the beach, so that’s where we went, in memory of her.

We got a really big campsite, and our tent seemed even bigger. I loved it.

On the first night we walked down to the beach. My dad and I played in the sand for hours. I loved the squishy feeling of the sand under my bare feet.

I got bored when my dad sat down, so I ran down to the water. I hadn’t thought I’d be
going in, so I didn’t pack a bathing suit. I jumped into the ocean with all my clothes on and splashed and swam. It was so cold, but so much fun.

My dad finally called for me to come back, saying the sun was going to do down in a few minutes.

When I got back, I sat next to my dad for a long time, the two of us just watching the sunset. I remember the sunset as the most beautiful thing I ever saw.

Watching the Clouds
Caitie Baglien

Looking out my window
Waiting for the rain
Wishing the sun would come again

Sitting in my chair
Dreaming of somewhere, without sadness
While watching the sky for a break in the
clouds to show me the way
Wishing the sun would stay out forever

Lying in the grass
Seeing the clouds pass
Watching the shadow of troubles
Don’t know what to feel

Suddenly there are storm clouds
Blocking my glimpses of hope
And I get lost and confused

Seeing all the birds fly
Wishing I could go so high,
Into the clouds above me

Climbing up a tree
Just the clouds and me
I finally dream away my troubles
In the clear, blue sky
On the day I die

Waking Up by Eddie Friedman

2009-09-30T18:00:00.000-07:00

I was in a slump, a rut, a state of inertia, spending far too little time outside. I walked from the house to the car and from the car to the classroom.

The many months since summiting Mt Hood had faded the exhilaration of that climb to no more than a pleasant memory. With only that vague recollection and a more recent experience descending a wilderness creek, I didn’t jump for joy when learning of the possibility to travel to Mexico and climb one of the highest peaks in North America. “Great,” I thought, “another exhausting schlep; but this time in a dry, desolate and polluted environment.” I couldn’t shed the image of crawling on my hands and knees over lacerative volcanic rock, choking in a soft whisper, “water.”

Although I attended monthly meetings of a local climbing club called the Explorer Post, I often either fell asleep at the meetings or spent the time stressing over the schoolwork waiting for me at home. The extent of my own exploring during those winter months took place in the Facebook photo albums of cool upperclassmen.

That all changed one rainy January evening. The speaker that night was an accomplished mountaineer who’d traveled the world and climbed the planet’s most renowned peaks. A rugged man, with outdoorsy yet stylish graying hair, he spoke with a remarkable nonchalance while recounting his treacherous climb of K2. His dialect combined that of surfer and sailor, sprinkling his narrative with “dude” and “chill” as well as the occasional expletive.

His tales of the Himalayas triggered something, and that night I went home more excited than I had felt in months. “I’m going to Mexico!” I nearly shouted at my parents who responded with a bewildered, “Okay.” Next morning I marched into the Outdoor office. “I want to go to Mexico,” I announced enthusiastically. Peter, the head of the outdoor program, a mentor and friend, responded with a tentative, “Okay.” “Sign me up,” I said, and received a slightly warmer, “All right.”

And so, one evening in February, some friends and I found ourselves riding through Mexico City in a white and yellow taxi. The city beneath the quickly darkening sky startled me with its life and vibrancy. Long chains of headlights and taillights flowed over the highways as the city’s twenty million inhabitants returned home from work. Some familiar Spanish words, spoken by our driver, pulled my attention back into the car.

“¿Porque eligieron ustedes el hotel?” Why did you choose this hotel?

“Porque es barato y en un buen área,” we replied, explaining the low cost and good location of our lodging.

“Barato, si,” our cab driver conceded, “pero muy peligroso.” Very dangerous.

I gulped. He went on about the prevalence of guns, robbery and prostitution, as well as the frequency of murder in the area. He suggested we switch hotels immediately and waved goodbye after unloading our duffels and backpacks. His final advice: keep your eyes open always.

My vision of crawling over sharp rock with cracking lips now included that of a gun to my head demanding my passport and money.

Yet I was in Mexico with an incredible group of friends, and faced it all with a sense of adventure. That night, my 16th birthday, we managed to sleep for a few hours before rousing at midnight. For the next 14 hours we hiked, rested, drank sweet melon juice, and hiked some more before reaching the summit of Iztaccíhuatl at 17,158 feet. The following days, spent in tiny Tepoztlán with its cobblestone streets and green cliffs, were the perfect conclusion for one of the most enjoyable adventures of my life.

At a Post meeting around a year later, I sat off to the side at the head of the room, taking a break from presidential duties to listen to that month’s speaker describe his attempt at Everest.

I watched eyes lighting up amidst the body of fresh-faced explorers.

The Last Lap of First Term by Sol Milne

2009-09-30T17:00:00.000-07:00

Blowing off Steam Two Wheels at a Time

The first term drawing to a close, and exams edging nearer and nearer, we turn to our sports to blow off steam. We were to cycle about 20km up the road, past Shawnigan Lake up to a campsite in the remote woodlands.

We left at 2 p.m., wheeling up the hilly incline of the highway side-road. Barely seconds into our journey came moans of aching ankles and collapsed calves. Our more hardcore cyclists smirked in contempt and whizzed ahead. Away from the highway, the drone and throb of busy vehicles died away and we admired the tranquil countryside – pine trees swaying in the cool breeze that numbed our knuckles and deer rooting about in the shrubbery to make sure no berries or new leaves had been overlooked. A lonely Labrador in a field spun in circles, a look of grim determination on his face as he tried fruitlessly to eat his own tail.

We had forgotten how quiet things could be, having become used to the steady buzz of the highway.

We trundled on as the hills grew steeper, belting out the lyrics of pop songs and pumping the pedals to the beat in our head. As we got higher, grumbles rang out about the penetrating wind soaring up our sleeves. But the strenuous push warmed us as we panted past Shawnigan Lake, amber light reflecting from the water and playing pictures on our worn out faces.

We reached the campsite a few hills later, cracked out the tents and started a fire. Changed and clean, we cozied up to the fire and passed around plates of sausages, pasta, baguettes and brie. We sat around the dancing flame telling stories, laughing at gossip and telling jokes.

Out came a guitar and we hummed and sang to Jack Johnson tunes as the smoke curled into the dying light. Then came a set of Feist and KT Tunstall, harmonies added impeccably by all the girls. Around the fire everyone brought forth some unbeknown talent, be it singing, joking, or storytelling. It was a night that I doubt any of the group will forget for a while.

We slept well, packed our tents away early, and went down the river to do community service and clear up the park. Though not necessarily obvious, garbage was bountiful. We filled our bags and two of us even found a fridge door wedged in the flow of the river. We piled the garbage into the school truck and went about our way, the hard saddles wreaking havoc on our tender rumps as we pedaled slowly homewards.

All the Small Things by Alex Page

2009-09-30T16:00:00.000-07:00

Itchy Sweaters, Mousy Hair and Black Bears--An Adventure Begins

I take the hands of the two people next to me, as they do the same. There are about forty of us, all holding hands to create a circle of unity and safety. Four days ago, we arrived at a The Outdoor Academy in the mountains of North Carolina. In about thirty minutes, we’ll be getting on buses to go to a place in the woods to spend the night on an orientation trek.

I look to my left. A tall boy with blond hair stands still and looks straight ahead. He has an ugly grey sweater on, and it looks scratchy. What is his name? John? Will?

To my right, a small girl with mousy hair taps her foot silently. Her hands are clammy. I want to say something comforting, but the layer of sweat in our hands separates me from this thought.

“Black Bears, stand to my right,” calls Emily, one of the teachers. She speaks with the voice of a babysitter, and seems nice, but you still can’t get over the idea that she actually deep down might want to strangle you.

My group, the Black Bears, includes ugly-sweater boy and clammy-hand girl. I know I have no real reason to hate them, but the truth is that before I get to know someone, I don’t have a choice but to judge them on the small things. And right now, since I can’t even remember who they are, the hokey nicknames are going to have to work.

“Hop in, you guys,” says Martin, the other teacher. Clammy-hand girl and I start for the door at the same time. We stop, back up, and move forward again before pausing to bask in the awkwardness.

Once we finally were able to enter the van, I look around and try to decide where to sit. There are three people in the van, each in a different row and leaning their heads against the windows, breath fogging the glass. I choose to sit next to a girl who I found earlier was from near Atlanta. The van starts moving, and I lean over to start conversation with her.

“So, you’re from Roswell?” I inquire politely. She slowly lifts her head up and looks at me.

“Yeah.”

“That’s so cool, I’m from Atlanta too!”

“Cool,” she mumbles, straining to sound interested, but obviously not trying to continue the conversation.

I doze off and wake up when the van stops in front of a trail. We hop out, stretch, put on our packs, and start up the winding mountain. No one speaks, and we look at the ground as if the mountain is the one keeping us quiet.

Arriving in camp is one of the happiest moments in backpacking. The relief of removing a heavy pack always puts people in a happy and energetic mood.

I observe the people walking around the campsite. Up the hill, two kids who know each other from Florida collect firewood. We need water. I ask the Atlanta girl to help me, hoping that we can strike up a conversation.

“What school do you go to?” I ask, thinking I might know some of her classmates.

“I’m home schooled,” she replies quietly. No wonder she’s so socially repressed, I think to myself.

I spill water on her shoe accidentally. I guess that’s strike one against me in her book. Or maybe she’s nice and doesn’t judge people on the small things like I do.

It’s starting to get dark, and half of us work on making dinner with Emily. We chop onions and boil spaghetti in the receding sunlight until we can use the light of a warm, crackling campfire to cook with. It’s the best feeling in the world to end a day of tough backpacking and frigid temperatures with warm food and a fire to talk around. Once the huge pot of food is eliminated, we can begin our evening activities.

Emily has a hat that she passes around with little slips of paper and pencils in it. We are to write down two wishes or aspirations on these slips of paper and toss them in. Out of the many things I have planned to do with my life, I choose joining the Peace Corps and hiking the Appalachian Trail. Once everyone has done this, we pass the hat around again, this time taking out a slip of paper, reading it aloud, and trying to guess whose wish it is.

Clammy-hand girl draws first.

“I want to be a pilot,” she states quickly. “Harry?” she guesses.

That’s his name! Harry! We all look at the boy in the grey sweater as he silently shakes his head. She places the slip of paper back in the hat and passes it to the left.

Now it is my turn to draw. I pull it out, read it in my head, and pause. I want to join the Peace Corps? But that is my slip! This one, however, is in a different handwriting. I read it aloud, cautiously.

“I want to join the Peace Corps. Megan?”

Megan, or Atlanta girl, looks up, smiles, and says yes. It’s amazing how only five minutes ago, I thought we had nothing in common other than our hometown.

The game continues on until all the slips are read, I know everybody’s names, and we create a symphony of yawning. I volunteer to wash the pot from dinner, and Megan says she will help. We walk off into the woods and talk for a while about the places we want to visit in the world in our future, while the pot drags behind us on the ground like our impressions of each other from before the trek.

Mystery at Trails by Indigo Grady

2009-09-30T14:00:00.000-07:00

An Inscrutable Sound Invites Wonder in the Wild

“Indigo, turn that axe around so when you fall on your face, it won’t be in the way!” said Christopher, the trail-maintenance leader and my English teacher, in his usual goofy and sarcastic way. We, the trail-maintenance work-crew of four, were marching up a slight hill past a horse pasture – the pasture was bare and lonely, surrounded by an electric fence that divided it from the rest of the terrain. I looked ahead to the tree-line and saw where a trail started its winding path through the trees. In those woods, we would begin our weekly duty of caring for the trails on our school’s campus. I could taste the sweet droplets of water from the slow and constant drizzle. I love the rain. My shoes slipped slightly on the mix of grass and mud as we continued our brisk pace towards the tree line.

“What are we doing today?” asked Noah, an outgoing, eccentric fellow student who always finds joy in life. I had a feeling it would be an exciting afternoon.

“We’re totally going to make some stairs!” Christopher replied.

“Stairs?” asked Claire, a talkative and hyper girl who always has a smile on her face.

“Yeah,” Christopher said. “We’re going to carve stairs into the treacherously angled parts of the trail.”

By this time, we had reached the tree line, and the drizzle was reduced by the many layers of canopy provided by the tall evergreens of the forest. I noticed how green the forest was even before most of the trees and shrubbery began to leaf. I enjoyed looking at the wet and shiny peeling bark of the birch trees and the sparkling droplets of water on green rhododendron leaves partially illuminated by the cloud-filtered sunlight. We kept going at Christopher’s brisk pace, treading on inches of soft brown pine needles. The forest smelled freshly of pine. Christopher stopped where the trail split.

“Indigo,” said Christopher. “I want you to walk down this trail with the clippers, cutting every branch you can reach from the center of the trail.” He handed me the clippers with one hand while pointing down the right fork with the other. I looked down the path to which he pointed. The path was fairly straight and level, and looked like a tunnel through the woods. I began to cut the few stray twigs and branches and threw the dead fallen limbs off the trail. I had to keep reminding myself to keep moving at a quick pace, as I occasionally fell back into a methodical way of cutting branches.

I was about halfway down the trail when the strange sounds began. Although I could clearly hear the sounds, they seemed distant. It was an eerie sound somewhere between the mechanical roar of a turbine engine and call of a whale. The sound fluctuated greatly but carried a rhythm I doubted could be created by mistake: Like a symphony of farm equipment and animals working together in an eerie rhythmic humming.

At first I thought of the possibility of Christopher, Claire, and Noah, trying to scare me, but the sound was complex and not something easily created. Next I thought of farm machinery, but the sound was too organic. The more I tried to think about the cause of the sound, the more ridiculous my explanations of the sound became. I thought about ghosts at a meeting or an “ET” type spacecraft coming to pick up a rogue alien. Finally, I gave up and decided that there are some things better left a mystery, and I tried to resume my work, though unsuccessfully.

The sound lulled me into a thinking void, disconnecting my brain from my body, and I thought about my life. I thought about how great of an opportunity it was to be able to hear these mystifying sounds at The Outdoor Academy, a four-month boarding school in Pisgah National Forest. I thought about how grateful I was for the acceptance of others. I thought about the contrast between my life here and at home. How much more I enjoyed life at OA than at home, how much closer to the earth I felt, not to mention the forty-five amazing friends here at OA both fellow students and faculty. At home, I would never have had the chance to talk to a teacher about a non-related subject over a meal, they would have been fired for fraternizing with students—as if getting to know students was a bad thing.

Yes, life at OA was definitely a nice way to live. I was almost afraid four months of this community-based life style would spoil me for the rest of the world. Then I realized that OA would provide lessons and invaluable knowledge that would be useful for the rest of my life, and that after the wonderful experience, I would feel closer to everybody back home.

“Indigo.”

I snapped back to the real world, realizing the mysterious sounds had stopped, I turned around. Christopher was standing a few feet away.

“Those were some incredibly cool sounds,” he said. I strained to look as if I had been working, although I had probably been zoned-out for at least a few minutes.

“Yeah they were. What caused them?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he replied. “It was like a whale was singing. Anyway, looks like you’ve done well enough here.” Christopher snapped off some twigs that I had considered to be off the trail. He then started back up the trail the way we had come. He took me up the windy trail he had taken Noah and Claire on. The day continued and our work-crew accomplished a lot. We leveled three sections of the trail, dug out at least ten stairs in two separate areas, and Christopher and I chopped a fallen tree in half with the axe.

That wonderful, drizzling day is one of my favorite memories yet. The sense of magic that was in the air, the great sense of belonging that day, not to mention the mysterious sounds. The sounds were something special that Christopher, Claire, Noah, and I still share. Maybe someday I’ll figure out where those sounds came from or at least hear my whale singing again. But most likely I’ll never know what caused the super-natural sounds on my first trail-maintenance duty. It is good having a little mystery in life.

Facing the Mountain by Katie Rowlett

2009-09-30T13:00:00.000-07:00

Meeting the Challenge of a Demanding Trail

Just a few more steps, I told myself.

You can do it. Just keep hiking.

At home, I would be in Spanish class, just about to have lunch. But at home I was not. I was at school, but a school unlike any other I had ever attended. We were all out in the heart of Pisgah National Forest with forty-pound packs on our backs, hiking up a mountain.

“About ten minutes until lunch,” one of my teachers, McNeil, called back from the head of the line. I groaned internally, as I was not sure that I would ever make it the rest of the way up this dreadful mountain. My legs had been sore from about ten feet onto the trail, and now they were on fire.

I looked up and was startled to see that the rest of the group was at least fifteen feet ahead of me. I tried to push my legs faster, but it seemed like they just didn’t want to move at any speed besides the one of their choosing.

What was happening to me? Back at home, I swam almost year-round and was usually in pretty good shape, but it seemed my stamina had been reduced to that of my six-year-old sister.

We all came to a stop when we reached a place where our trail intersected with another. I trudged up the last few feet, slowly bringing up the rear.

“How about we eat lunch here? Everyone good with that?” McNeil asked.

“Sounds good!” came the response that sounded much too enthusiastic for how I was feeling. I nodded in as much exhausted agreement as I could, and plopped down onto the ground as soon as I could heave my bulky pack off.

“Who wants to help get the food out?”

McNeil looked around for volunteers. I knew I should be a good member of the group and help out, but right then I didn’t feel like doing anything but sitting on my butt. Three other students raised their hands and let me off the hook. I leaned up against a tree and closed my eyes.

After a few minutes, a student called “lunch is ready.” I pulled myself up and walked over to where pita bread, hummus, cheese, and tomatoes had been set out. I didn’t feel like eating much. Picking up half a pita, I spread a layer of hummus on it and went and sat back down. Everyone else was talking and laughing, and I tried to join in some, but it seemed awkward to me. I continued to stay to myself until suddenly a voice said “Katie?” from next to me.

Nate, the other group leader, a short, broad-chested guy who always seemed to be in a good mood, was sitting next to my pack. “Hey,” he said.

“Hi.” I tried to smile.

“I just wanted to check in and make sure everything was going okay,” he said lightly. “It seemed like the last part of that hike was a bit hard.”

I almost felt like crying. So everyone had seen how hard it had been for me. Great.

“Um... It was just a bit steep at the end there,” I mumbled.

“No kidding,” he agreed. “You guys were all doing great.”

“Yeah, everyone else was doing fine,” I muttered.

“You were too!” he said, but I knew that saying those things was just part of the job description.

“I’m just not up for this.” I sighed. “Everyone else went up that mountain like it was a hill, and I barely made it up with my lungs intact.”

“See the ridge?” He asked. I nodded. “We walk along that flat part for about a mile, and then it’s downhill to our campsite from there.” Nate said. “You’ve conquered the worst part.“

I looked out across the trail and was surprised at just how much we could see from where we were sitting.

BLUE-FORESTED MOUNTAIN CHAINS WOVE IN AND OUT AS FAR AS I COULD SEE.

THE SKY WAS A CRYSTAL-CLEAR BLUE DOTTED WITH COTTON-BALL CLOUDS.

Though the trees were barren, the scene was not one of a desolate midwinter, but instead breathtakingly grand. It was beautiful, and I realized how much I might have missed while just thinking about my troubles. We really had hiked up pretty far, and I had done it, hadn’t I? I decided then that my goal for the next day that we were out in the forest was just to enjoy the scenery and the company of the people around me.

“Sure. Thanks Nate,” I said and gave him a real smile this time.

“No problem. Now I think I’m going to get another sandwich. Backpacking makes me hungry!” He stood up.

“That sounds like a good idea,” I agreed. My appetite had suddenly come back. He held
out a hand and helped me up. We walked over to the food, and this time I put lots of cheese and tomato on my pita. I went over, sat down, and joined in the conversation.

Images and Words from the Olympic Coast by Daniel Silverman

2009-09-30T12:30:00.000-07:00

Reflections from an expedition to one of the most rugged and remote places in the lower 48 states

The Crab

This crab is not alive. I spent a quarter hour setting up the model, and 1/500th of a second taking the photo. Infinitely more satisfying than the actual act of photography was contemplating the life of this tiny crustacean. Noting the speckled pattern on its shell, I am reminded of spray paint. Pondering further, I think that we visitors are more like spray paint than this little fellow. He spent his whole life on this one beach, becoming a perfect part of the way of the ocean. We people are applied as hastily as graffiti, a drippy tag on the bathroom wall. In this, I am reminded not of a crab shell, but of a huge question: do we deserve it? I, so temporary, merely visit this place. The corpse of this creature, so brittle and fragile, is infinitely more permanent than I. While it may last for weeks or years, I am to be on a van home the next day. As I trudge away, I picture a statue; an immortal visualization of some being far more essential than I.

The Group

As a team of backpackers, we made a connection that has transcended all physical boundaries. Whether going to travel the world, to enlist, or merely to return home and take a shower, we all returned to Portland with a new perspective. A new viewpoint of the world could be described as the tilt and shift of a view camera, as the flick of a light switch, or as the historical journey from black and white into color in The Wizard Of Oz. However, all of these things imply a tangible change. There was something akin to the sense of peace you feel when first waking up in the morning, without an alarm clock, without work to do. It is warm under the covers, there is nothing outside of your tiny perfect world. This is different. The purity of the forest left us with something even greater, as if our tiny peaceful world had expanded to follow us, encompassing everything we saw.

The Starfish

There are a very few things that I learned in elementary school. The most interesting of which, I believe, is how starfish eat. A hungry starfish will swell up, and then attach itself to a clam. The mouth of the starfish pries a tiny hole through the seal of the shell, holding as tight as it can. When the hole has been made, the starfish vomits up digestive liquid (hydrochloric acid) into the poor clam. After the clam has been melted into soup, the starfish inverts it's stomach, filling the shell. When it has finished consuming the clam, it retracts its stomach. After a while, it deposits the waste into the empty shell through the same hole. The entire process can take 2-3 days. The strangest part of it all is how calm and peaceful the little starfish appears. Funny how things are not always as they seem.

The March

I thought nothing of it at the time. Now, I see an analogue to Lewis and Clark's great expedition. The broken line of men, with their backpacks bulging from the gear, look like they have no destination, only a desire to go somewhere. Indeed, I spent a lot of time meditating on the purpose of the expedition. I found it, sure enough: to live. So much of what we do every day is mechanical, automatic. The purpose of this expedition was not simply to "shake things up." It was to make us think to live. It was to make us work for our progress, not rely on fossil fuel, or the engineered precision of a bicycle, but to put one foot in front of the other, and move the world beneath ourselves. And, with each step, I thought: left, right. Left, right. Which one is which? Does it matter? Yes, it does. It all matters. That is why we take the time to reaffirm our beliefs. We take the time to revitalize our elements of life.

The Peak

All of us will eventually reach a peak, at which point we can rise no farther, and we must go back down. I climb towards the peak of my life, wondering not about what it will be like, but what it has been like. In our rush to achieve, we forget the most valuable peaks are those we climb together. Now, my motto, "stand up, or fall down," applies perfectly: in our standing up, our achievement, we bring ourselves back up, not to where we would be, but where we should be. If we do not try, if we separate, we will fail. Because even small peaks are great, every molehill is a mountain if you are willing to climb it. As a team, we scale the rock, and as a team, we slide back down. Thinking about our inevitable downfall is nothing more than a waste of time. When we do fall, another takes our place. Our success, indeed our very spirit, is transfered to them. The important part is that we peak because we are unified. Disparate, we recede, sliding back to the abyss.

Photography

2009-09-30T12:00:00.000-07:00

TOM VOGT SHOWS OFF SOME OF HIS FIRE-STARTING GEAR. IT WAS A COLD DAY IN MARCH, WITH RECORD RAINFALL, SNOW IN THE PASS, AND HAIL IN CAMP-- NONE OF WHICH PREVENTED TOM FROM GETTING A FIRE ROARING. -- RGL

AS A TEAM OF BACKPACKERS, WE MADE A CONNECTION THAT HAS TRANSCENDED ALL PHYSICAL BOUNDARIES. THE PURITY OF THE FOREST LEFT US WITH SOMETHING GREATER, AS IF OUR TINY PEACEFUL WORLD HAD EXPANDED TO FOLLOW US, ENCOMPASSING EVERYTHING WE SAW. -- Daniel Silverman

I'M NOT QUITE SURE WHAT I WAS THINKING ABOUT. I CAN TELL YOU ONE THING, I WAS DEFINITELY FEELING HAPPY. EVERYONE WAS. THE WHOLE TRIP!

I THINK I HAD THOUGHTS OF THE THINGS AROUND ME AND THE PEOPLE AROUND ME, AS WELL. NEGATIVE OR POSITIVE, I LET THEM FLOW. -- Morgan Lyon

Taylor Welch

LATE AFTERNOON ON THE LAST DAY OF THE EXPEDITION, THE TEAM WENT INTO THE WOODS, EACH PERSON SEEKING HIS OR HER OWN SOLITUDE. THE ASSIGNMENT WAS TO FIND A SPECIAL PLACE, A SPECIAL MOMENT AND TO TRY TO CAPTURE THAT PLACE IN AN IMAGE.

Noah Goetsch Berch

I'VE NEVER BEEN TO SUCH A PEACEFUL PLACE, THE CALM WATER WITH THE SUNSET MAGNIFYING ITS BEAUTY ONTO THE OCEANS, AND THE SMELL OF OCEAN AND FOREST COMBINED ALL INTO ONE. IT IS TRULY AN AMAZING SIGHT. SO CALM, SO QUIET. -- K.C. Brewer

Shelby Turner

Taylor Welch

TO SMELL THE SWEET SCENT
OF PINE NEEDLES FIRST THING IN THE
MORNING,
FILLING MY LUNGS,
FAR FROM THE HUSTLE AND BUSTLE OF
THE GREAT CITY OF ROSES.
IT LINGERS IN MY LUNGS, NEVER
WANTING TO LEAVE.

TO HEAR THE VOICE OF THE STREAM,
SINGING A MUMBLED SONG,
I LISTEN VERY QUIETLY,
LIKE MUSIC TO MY EARS,
BUT IT’S NATURES TRUE MELODY.
-- Taylor Welch

Taylor Welch

I, me, the outside, him, here, the inside.
We, us, together, them
All of us at mt hood
We all like the experience of being able
To do our own kind of thing—
Like me, I really loved the adventure
Of snowshoeing and being able to go on my own
In the snow—
It was a blast
I loved the peace and quiet on the trail,
My breath against the wind
My mind in a spin
And my feet cold
My temp high
My mind set, clean
The wild outside
The white trees so bright
My eyes were wide when the sun was shining
I loved the soft snow,
The touch of peace—happiness
To some a chore to hike
But to me a blessing to be
Outdoors
A touch of care
Mixed with a pinch of air
And friends who are there
With you

–Joey Fulton

Photo Contest Winner

2009-09-30T11:00:00.000-07:00

“A Winter View of Morning”

Photographer: Noah Goetsch Berch, 17 years old
Camera: PowerShot SD770 IS

“This shot was taken early in the morning. I was on my daily routine of Morning Watch, I walk up a trail, pick myself a comfortable spot to sit, collect myself, and prepare myself for day. It was a Monday, the evening before it started to snow in the Pisgah Forest, NC. At my boarding school, all of the students woke up the next morning and we were all excited about the view of snow. It was beautiful. It looked like we were in a “winter wonderland”. Snow was everywhere. Living in Atlanta, Ga, I rarely get to see snow, so when I saw the snow that morning, I had to capture that moment. The weather that day was cold, calm, and quiet. The clouds were hovering the mountains and the air was thick.

My Wild Youth: An Adult Writer Looks Back

2009-09-30T10:00:00.000-07:00

Surf

by John Landretti

When I was seventeen, I lived for a while in northern Peru. I was sent to the local school, where I soon discovered that my simple Spanish could not keep pace with the lessons. After a few weeks I gave up even the appearance of understanding and passed the long hours drawing pictures in a notebook. Eventually I quit the school. The thing to do, I decided, was to go up to Ecuador and see what was there. Someone loaned me a rucksack, and a few days later I was on a bus that crossed the border and started into the Andes Mountains. From my seat in back, I watched the front window swivel out over cliff corners, the dangling saints leaning in unison—now left, now right—always, it seemed, toward the highland clouds which towered along the horizon like one of the outer zones of heaven.

I suppose had my mother known what I was doing, she would have died.
In such a state, she could have come out to the edge of those clouds and waved me clear back to Wisconsin.

As it was, my arrangements proved so informal that I could go off on my own with astonishing ease. During my months as a student abroad, I made several unscheduled trips—to Lima and Machu Picchu, to desert beaches, up to Lake Titicaca. But the journey to Ecuador marked my first time out into the strangeness of the world and so was charged with that almost dreamlike energy of initial experiences. After an eye-opening week in Quito, I boarded a bus down to the coast. While the high Andes are beautiful—a bracing world of fragrances and angles uncommon to a flatlander—it was only a prelude to my desire for the ocean which all my life had been confined to the featureless blues of classroom maps. Yet even such representations had intrigued me: I was taken by the way our language seemed to crowd itself onto the continents, the names of cities, rivers, mountains, countries all tilting this way and that in a cramped jumble of proclamations. The vast oceans, meanwhile, remained nearly wordless. The effect gave the world an air of mystery, as if the majority of our planet were beyond description.

For what seemed ages, my bus for the coast refused to leave. We were somewhere in the middle of Quito, without a driver, idling under the stars. As I sat there, an urge to use a restroom grew increasingly insistent. But the bus had no facilities. At last I slipped outside, looking for a spot that was discrete and yet not far from the door. I settled for a deep shadow directly behind the bus. But as I was about to begin, I noticed a girl watching me. She was around my age, an Indian with long braids and a bowler hat. She may have been another passenger, or just someone from the neighborhood headed home. At any rate, she had stationed herself at the curb much like a spectator waiting politely for a parade. Her expression was nothing I’d been prepared for: unconcealed fascination. I stepped away from her, farther into the shadows, and she stepped toward me. I stepped once more, and once more she followed. I waved her off, but to no effect. Finally I just turned my back to her and did what I had to; she, meanwhile, began to move around me, still determined to witness the details of this extraordinary event. I continued turning my back to her, all the time painting myself into a distressed circle, while she persisted in her serene orbit, leaning and looking.

At last, the bus left. Hours later, before dawn, our driver pulled over for a break. I stumbled out with about a dozen travelers, all of us mulling around near an old monument. The chill of mountain air was gone. Palm trees ran back into a jungle and the stars seemed moist and heavy. Someone indicated that we were on the equator. It was a galvanizing bit of news; as we huddled there on that famous line, a spirit of fellowship overtook us. I returned to my seat teamed up with two young guys headed for the ocean.

Later that afternoon we arrived in a city near the coast and waited together for a second bus that would complete our long journey. As we sat outside the station, a couple of girls approached us, two sisters. They had noticed us looking out at the fields of broken concrete so explained in halting English what had occurred. Unsatisfied with their explanation, they hired a cab and took us around their city, pointing out different places where the earth had shaken. We passed among blocks of ordinary buildings and open stretches of rubble. We saw several high-rises still standing, their corners startled apart and now mortared with fissures of air. The sisters brought us to their home, a few rooms behind a plank-board door where their parents welcomed us in with the most memorable warmth and delight.

Thirty years later, I have all but forgotten what these parents looked like. What remains is distinctly partial: a father’s eyes beaming with kindness, a mother’s arms setting before us platters of bread and fried eggs—such fragments of a memory have a curious way of surviving the otherwise wholesale disappearance of a recollection. It’s as if what remains had been touched by some sort of divine fixative. When such indelible bits lodge in our hearts, they often transform into something more profound than the mind’s reference to anything specific. In this case, when I ponder human kindness—what it is and how it has touched me—those eyes, those arms, appear before my consideration not as the features of one man and woman, but rather as images with a more mystical affiliation, gazing or reaching my way from the body of the life itself. The father hired two cabs and the family traveled with us back to the station. They bought our fares, and then refusing our protests, purchased our three bus tickets to the ocean

The next morning, we arrived at a sea village. In a dark shop we stocked up on sardines and bananas off the stem. We walked until we found sand and then crossed a foot bridge over an expanse of mud roasting in the sun. On the far side, under palm trees, a man rented us a tent. While my friends rested, I hurried out to the wide ocean. In one direction, the beach ran for as far as I cared to look: mile after lonely mile of breakers playing across the sand. In the other direction lay a point of black rocks. I hiked to them; the point faced an expanse of choppy sea that ended at an island which was no more than a series of stone benches not quite above the surface. Hundreds of sea birds were lifting and settling among its popping and twisting waters. I thought about dog-paddling over to those mysterious rocks; it wasn’t far, perhaps I could even wade across to them. But something inside of me prohibited the adventure and so I turned reluctantly away and wandered back toward the tents.

As I was walking along, five native women emerged from the palms. They were at a distance: older and dressed in the long black underclothing of an earlier age. They approached the surf with the casual aplomb people bring to any simple pleasure done well and without reflection. Soon they had settled gracefully among the waves, a group of female heads talking and laughing. I cannot say they were swimming; that seems oddly incorrect—too modern. It was more that they were having a sea bath. Despite a little guilt, I stared intently at them, the marvel of these older women frolicking in their archaic underwear—I, now, in the same voyeuristic position as that of the Indian girl who had so intently watched me. How human, this irrepressible hunger to witness what is hidden, to expand our discovered country, and so test the boundary between what must remain forbidden and what is rightfully ours to know. Surely this tendency keeps the angels busy—sometimes smiling, sometimes admonishing, sometimes just holding their breath.

As evening came, my two companions and I went looking for coconuts. I suppose we could have bought one at a shop, but that would have taken the fun out of the hunt. As it was, the sands around our tents were sterile of those huge pods, so we wandered up the beach until at last we encountered one—a small, beleaguered-looking thing that had probably washed in from Polynesia. We did only as people reared in the middle of a continent would do: we propped it up and tried to beat it open with a stick. An hour later we went to bed worn out and with no coconut.

For a long while I lay in the dark listening to the surf; it was as though the thunders of a thousand storms had found their voice again; the sounds, though, seemed much older, beyond anger, speaking only in tones of self-proclamation and sighs. And then I came out of a dream and all the sounds seemed different. I crawled from the tent and found that the sea was gone. Stunned, I ran onto a wet desert made glossy in moonlight. It was a scene as fantastic as a folktale, as if that First Chinese Brother had filled his head with the ocean and left behind a basin of shells and broken ships. I kept walking out, farther and farther. When at last I looked back, the edge of South America seemed far away: just few points of light along the horizon. Finally I could see the surf: it came rushing toward me from out of the darkness. It seemed a living veil, roiling and hissing. Though just inches high, it rustled in with such intent that I began to skitter backwards. The surf continued after me for several yards and then slowed into a mass of quiet bubbles that paused at a border of its own choosing. It seemed to hesitate there, as if observing me, before wheeling around and sliding back into darkness.

I thought, well isn’t that something! and made myself kneel in the soaked sand to await the next charge. Seconds later it came, ghostly and galloping, three inches high. As it boiled in, I was suddenly leapt to my feet and run backwards just beyond the line where it all came to a stop. Again, the bubbles seemed to observe me and again, as if satisfied, wheeled around and slid back into night. I kept to my place—tense, thrilled—and laughed uneasily at whatever inside me refused to receive that bewitching froth. I tried again, but no amount of will could keep me kneeling there in that damp moonlight. What was this contest? What was it that made me jump up and run away? I sometimes think that my life would have turned out differently had I stayed put, much the way the fate of Schrödinger’s Cat depends on who looks into the box. But that is conjecture, and I can no more force the truth of it than I can break open a coconut with a stick. As it is, that antic surf has returned to me again and again from its place out of time. Through my own reflection and the alchemy of years, those moonlit waters have gradually revealed to me something more of their nature: a presence both feminine and divine. Some might call such a presence the Eternal Bride, others the Beloved. By any name, she is a fiercely joyful figure, and at peace with her darkness. I can now look back over a lifetime and sense her mischief in everything. That night at the edge of my manhood, she gave me a dance to remember.

Featured Young Writer - Tom Vogt

2009-09-30T09:00:00.000-07:00

The Virtues of Wilderness Self-Reliance

I’m not sure what I hoped to find in the snow-laden woodland that afternoon. Carrying only a small backpack of water, binoculars, and field guides, I didn’t actually expect my amateur tracking skills would yield results. After spending the last week reading tracking manuals, I knew only that I wanted to test myself.

Slipping as quietly as I could under the dripping canopy of Douglas Fir and Western Hemlock, I attempted to emulate the tracker’s “fox walk”. Placing each toe deliberately, testing every step to ensure its complete silence, I gradually made my way towards a lake I had seen on the map. I knew from my studies that transitional areas of forest were the best place to pick up tracks, and that animal prints would appear clearly in the lakeside’s soft mud. I stalked closer with each painstaking step, trying to relax my vision to better detect motion, and to open my ears to the smallest rustle. Most of all, I concentrated on loosening my grasp on time. I needed to find a tracker’s patience to understand that it might take me an hour to cover a few hundred yards in silence.

At last, I found prints. A pair of white-tailed deer had crept through the snow, but as I beginner I had no way of knowing that they had passed only minutes before. Kneeling in the drifting snow, I began to track. The deer’s sharply pointed toes left clear marks, unfolding like lines on a map towards the forest’s center. As I crested another hill, I spied my quarry in the frozen streambed below. A doe with a fawn in tow grazed cautiously on a few sparse patches of uncovered greenery. Even as the icy cold of the snow soaked through my pants and the wind picked up, I stalked ever closer to the pair. I advanced only when they had returned to feeding. Within a few dozen feet, a crunch of icy snow betrayed my presence. Startled, the mother led her fawn bounding into the safety of the deeper underbrush. Silently thanking the deer for an experience I would never forget, I began my trudge homeward.

The magic of finding those deer on my first attempt at tracking showed me the rewards of learning primitive wilderness skills. I had attended workshops to learn how to identify edible plants, build natural shelters, and make fire with nothing but twigs and friction. I learned what to do if I became lost, and how to “survive” the worst that nature had to offer. As I learned more, I began to realize that the idea of “man vs. wild” was fundamentally incorrect, and that going with the flow of nature represented the superior survival strategy.

My passion changed over time to an effort to understand nature more fully, and to strip away many of the layers between myself and the wild. The study that I now call “wilderness self-reliance” incorporates bird watching, tracking, botany, survival skills, and philosophy.

An important aspect of wilderness self-reliance is knowing how to replace any piece of modern gear with a natural substitute. When my family and I go backpacking, we bring many of the most modern outdoor conveniences: stoves, tents, and sleeping bags. I also carry with me the knowledge of how to replace every piece of that gear with something improvised from nature. If my stove fails, I can start a fire from nothing. If I get lost returning to camp, I can set up a shelter to replace my tent and sleeping bag using only debris from the forest floor. These skills provide a sense of security that stems from the knowledge that in any circumstance, I can still keep myself and my family members alive. Armed with this confidence, the wilderness is no longer something to be feared or avoided.

Beyond simple survival, wilderness self-reliance offers a way for us to return to our roots. Before I began my own journey of exploration, trees were simply trees and birdsongs merely attractive noise. After I learned about botany and ornithology, my experience became richer. To the student of self-reliance, the pattern of specific tree species speaks volumes on the nature of the surrounding forest, and the particular call of a song sparrow can provide clues about the movement of predators and foragers.

Traveling in the wilderness without at least a basic knowledge of what’s going on around you is like watching a foreign film without subtitles.
At their most basic level, wilderness self-reliance skills offer me a comforting insurance policy against disaster. At a deeper, more spiritual level, they have allowed me to connect with nature and find greater meaning in it.

As I walked home from the woods soaking wet and exhilarated after tracking my first deer, I knew I had discovered a lifelong passion. Learning to live off the land reintroduces you to humanity’s place in the web of nature, and reminds us of how closely the natural world’s well-being and our own are interconnected. I believe anyone who loves the outdoors would benefit from taking a few small steps towards self-reliance. Learn the five most common trees, and their uses. Try to start your next campfire without matches. Begin to identify the birds that appear most frequently in your backyard, and what their various calls mean. It’s amazing how quickly the wilderness will feel like home, and how much more there is to understand about the natural world around us.

Editor's Note: If you're interested in learning more about wilderness survival, hear are some sources the Tom recommends:

Print:

Tom Brown's Field Guide to Wilderness Survival (Berkley Publishing, 1983). "My favorite wilderness survival guide, by renowned tracker Tom Brown."
Field Guide to Trees of North America (Chanticleer Press, 2008).
Animal Tracks of Washington & Oregon (Lone Pine Publishing, 1997) "An excellent guide to tracking Northwest animals, by Ian Sheldon."
"Self-reliance" by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Internet:

youtube.com/user/wildernessoutfitters -- the webpage of Dave Canterbury, survival instructor
natureskills.com -- a website containing a variety of articles on wilderness skills
allaboutbirds.org -- the website for Cornell University's Ornithology Lab, the premier resource for bird watching.