Ursula's Angels - Part II

Hello faithful blog readers! It's been so nice to get such positive and enthusiastic feedback about my mental meanderings and stories - you have inspired me to write more and often. As of late I have been simply pouring out memories into my keyboard. I hope some of them are entertaining. These are raw versions and feedback is welcome! All the Ursula's Angels entries are about my course in October. There is more to come, and also some stories about the Everglades, and kayaking to Lignumvitae State Park in the Keys...stay tuned, faithful readers, and thank you!

This is a long one, but here is a preview of the excitement within...
About twenty minutes passes, and two cars drive over our snake. “That snake is dead,” she says. I am hoping that I have kept my credibility by claiming to be unsure about its vivacity. I talk with her about how logical it would be to turn around, how I would really like to go back to camp but must keep her in sight and sound as part of my job, but she is not convinced. “You can go ahead and go back if you want,” she says, “I’m goin home.”

About five minutes later, a county sheriff’s car happens to drive by. Call me crazy, but a short black girl carrying a giant plastic bag followed by a tall white woman with a backpack and gallon-size water jug walking down an all-but-deserted dirt road at high noon looks a little strange. So he pulls over.
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At the end of Day 1, I felt as if we had melded five full days together into one. Once at camp, I was instructor cook-of-the-day (we rotated between “cook”, “doctor”, and “navigator” roles throughout course), and so recruited Rachael Ray and Whitney Huston to work with me in the kitchen. Our field kitchen consists of a 2-burner propane stove and 2 gigantic pots set atop a backboard, which is balanced on all of the 5-gallon water jugs not currently in use. The walls of the kitchen are formed with the four black Action Packers we carry, which are heavy-duty plastic boxes that (sometimes) keep out the ants. We sit on 5-gallon buckets to do our work, which tonight includes boiling hot dogs – we have a “freshies” meal since we have just left base – and opening several cans of baked beans. The beans give us some trouble after our 25-cent can opener breaks halfway through opening the first can. Alex doesn’t want me to dull her knife – we’ve only brought one knife to minimize the possibility of a knife falling into student possession – so we try to be inventive with our fallen-apart can opener. One girl, Jojo, is very inventive and helpful and after several attempts has created a hole big enough to shake out the majority of the beans. Meanwhile, Cece, our biggest bug-stresser, is having her first outdoor mosquito experience. We have made sure that all the girls had a chance to put on “bug clothes” –long sleeves and pants, socks and a hat or bandana – but this is not enough for her. She is hopping around in her grey long underwear with bug spray in hand, making a racket to beat all rackets.
“These bugs are BITING me! Aah!”

“Cece, why don’t you come sit by the fire, the bugs aren’t as bad over here.”

“No, you don’t UNDERSTAND, they are BITING me!”

After trying to console her and help her help herself with the bugs for the first round of hysterics, we gave ourselves positive feedback for continuing with the normal evening routine without unnecessary attention to Cece’s antics.

Jojo is still shaking those beans, as one or two at a time burst out into the giant cooking pot below. Finally, dinner is served, with tortilla chips and powdered fruit punch to complement our fine cuisine. “Five minutes to chow!” Jojo announces, and we start moving everyone in the direction of their first chow circle.

Chow circle is a sacred time in Outward Bound. Although each group has its own flow and rituals, the basic structure is a common thread in all Outward Bound courses, and there is something strangely spiritual in thinking about all of the other chow circles occurring in OB courses around the world, and all those in courses past – that for a few brief moments out of a crazy day, we remember that in this gathering of individuals, we are connected to thousands of other individuals working toward the same purpose: “To serve, to strive, and not to yield.”

Our chow circle begins with hand-washing and connects itself with a right-arm-over-left grasp of ones neighbor’s hands. “Bella” leads our circle, beginning with “Is camp crafty?” The Sharon Osborne of the day replies “yes!” and we continue to Appreciations, where everyone shares. On this particular night, many of the appreciations refer to home and family, which the girls are missing already. In the middle of our appreciation circle this evening, we notice the loud motor of a distant airboat – and soon we notice it getting louder and louder. In the middle of someone’s appreciation, it is so loud that we can barely hear Brittney talking, and then the airboat itself bursts across the land between us and the river and lands just behind our turtled canoes at the edge of camp. Alex is sent as instructor-ambassador and we try to focus. “Ok, cooks, what’s for dinner?” says Bella, and Jojo makes the announcement. A moment later, we see that Alex has convinced the airboat captain to turn his vessel around and not proceed through our camp, much to my and Kim’s relief. As he revs up the engine for his giant fan, we pause chow circle – we have no choice, we cannot hear a thing – and look up to see the giant fan propel the boat over land. At the same time, the giant wind created by this contraption overturns two of our canoes – sending one rather high into the air – and gives us all a wind-blown hair-do. So much excitement. We finish our chow circle with the traditional moment of silence and “pass the pulse.” When the pulse has reached its origin, Sharon-of-the-day says “Peace, Love, and Chow” and the group responds “Chow, Love and Peace!” Then we uncross arms and spin outward, turning our circle into a star and waiting for Racheal Ray to call bowl numbers.
Day one has gone on for a long time. After hotdogs, and seconds on hotdogs –and trying to get several girls to eat who refuse – there is kitchen clean-up, more bug-stressing, Brittney being loquacious and trying to get to know all of her comrades around the fire, evening meeting, and finally, bedtime. The girls are allowed ten minutes of Tent Talk Time, and they have been informed of the consequences of complying (extra Talk Time on following nights) or not complying (no extra Talk Time, get out of your tent take it down and set it up again for extra reminders). They go right to sleep.

For instructors, the day is not yet over. It is time for paperwork. Under red headlamps, we meet in our tent to escape the ever-prevailing bugs and listen to mosquitoes buzz and hum outside our zippered fortress of nylon. Our paper work includes writing feedback and determining a grade for each student, writing a synopsis of the day in a Course Log, recording all of our lessons and teachable moments in an Ed Log, and making sure all medications we properly documented in a Med Log. Luckily, Alex is the paperwork goddess and has us all on track, burrowing into feedback and grades. We celebrate the end of the epic first day and move into our instructor evening meeting, during which we follow “FEDUPS,” an acronym of Kim’s invention which stands for “Feedback, Entertainment, Debrief, Urges, Plan, and Sleep.”

At Outward Bound, feedback is a daily ritual that is given with more honesty and objectivity and good-will than I have ever observed. We each give each other one piece of positive and one piece of constructive feed back for the day. I write these down. Kim’s entertainment is: “Best boob story.” There are some funny ones, although it was late enough that I forget what they were – I just remember laughing thoroughly. After debriefing the ups and downs and in-betweens of the day, we say all of the things we’d been urging to say throughout the day but couldn’t in front of our students. Inappropriate humor is highly encouraged during this section of the meeting. Before we crash, we make a plan of action for the next day, which will begin at 6:30am. Good night!


Day 2

On the morning of day two, I was the first to wake up. Actually, I do not clearly remember, but I feel fairly confident in claiming that as I was almost always the first to wake up, because I cannot, CANNOT sleep with any sort of light on, and the sun shines early through a white rain fly.

Soon, Kim’s eyes pop open, and we nudge Alex, the soundest sleeper among us, and we are stuffing sleeping bags into stuff sacks and reviewing our morning plan in whispers. We have our tent down before the girls are up and then approach the two student tents that face us. “Good morning ladies! Welcome to day two. You have five minutes to get yourselves and all of your things out of your tents. Things do not need to be organized, just outside the door.”

Oh faithful blog readers, if you do recall, this was my least favorite part of being treated as a student during NST – the 5-minute morning wake-up call. What a shock, and I feel for the students. But, the point is to start the day off quickly and minimize lolly-gagging. As you might expect, our students are unduly pleasant in the morning, never argue, and wake up with bright shiny faces.

One student is able to get herself out of the tent in five minutes. The others struggle with jumbled socks and stuff sacks and sleepy eyelids, and the morning begins with a refocus circle. Tents are to be down and river-rolled in ten minutes, which is another time goal lost this first morning together, and another refocus circle. We are trying to keep our momentum going until breakfast, but so far it has been a struggle. The morning routine is a long one until it is well-practiced. Still, there is some humor in it as well. When we teach the girls how to river-roll their tents, we teach them the steps by telling them that the tent will look like a burrito and that the rain fly, which goes on top, is the hot sauce. Now, I’m not sure if I forgot to say originally that the rain fly is actually called the “rain fly,” or if the girls just liked calling it the “hot sauce,” but from that day forward they never referred to the rain fly as anything other than “the hot sauce” when assembling or disassembling tents. One tent would be almost all the way set up, when Cece – who could really get things done when she put her mind to it – would say to Taylor “girl, go over there and get me that hot sauce so we can stake this tent into the ground.” Ah, the hot sauce.

Aja refuses to get out of her tent, and after several minutes of failed coercing, Kim decides to pull her sleeping bag and e-mat out for her. Our course director objected to this method, stating that Kim risked a bigger blow-up, but it did the job in this case, as Aja grumpily followed her sleeping materials to the out-of-doors. She sat in separation with her sheet and sleeping bag, refusing to participate, along with another highly displeased student, Wrya, while the others put away sleeping bags and bug clothes into gear bags and sat on a circle of e-mats for a morning sunscreen party, stretch circle, and our first “House of Gain.”

The girls are still a bit sleepy, but some are excited about leading a stretch and a count-off word when their turn arrives. We share several jokes during sunscreen party, and things are looking up. Our circle is quite small this morning, with two out of the seven girls refusing to participate and Kim hopping between Aja and Wrya. House of Gain includes one minute of abs, 30 seconds of push-ups, and a one minute mystery-exercise-of-your-choice, the whole routine performed twice. Following this was our first bucket run – ah, ten minutes of pure bliss. I never realized what a struggle it would be for students to run even this short amount of time – but then, most of them had never experienced running before, and it came out in a festival of whining, tears, and annoyed faces. I remember my first attempts at running during middle school when even a trip around the block felt like a huge workout. And I’ll admit – going in circles around buckets can get monotonous, even while playing the alphabetical movie and celebrity game. Brittney and Cece in particular struggle with completing this run – although both appear to be in relatively fit condition – and both are required to make up the entire run after receiving three warnings each for walking or stopping. Cece, still wearing her bug jacket from last night, cries the entire time, but she finishes.

Finally, it is time for bucket baths. Alex stays at camp with Wrya and Aja, who are still being non-compliant, and Alex and I take the rest down to the muddy shore along with shampoo and two 5-gallon buckets. We fill the buckets with river water and stand a bit further inland – we are not allowed to soap up in or near the water for environmental reasons – where we have placed at e-mat and are about ready to demonstrate for the girls how to bathe and scrub the all-important “pits and parts” while fully clothed, when I hear Kim calling my name from camp. (We cannot see camp from shore at this particular campsite.) I leave Alex with the girls and wonder what Kim needs me for. As I walk up the path, I hear Kim calling my name again. I wonder what could be this urgent for her to call out twice within five minutes, and I begin to run.

“Hi Jennica, you’re going to have to take the backpack and walk down the road.”

I look at her confusedly for a moment, and then realize that Aja is no longer in camp. “Aja decided to go for a little walk down the road.”

“Ah,” I say. “Ok, I’m on it.”

“Don’t stress, grab your water and your fastpack and the phone and then we’ll make a plan.” I collect the required items – we keep a special “runpack” filled with first-aid items, sunscreen, a snack, contact info, and all things necessary should a student attempt to run away. “Ok,” Kim says, “plan is, if she is still going in twenty minutes, call the on-call phone – that’s Joe, our Educational Coordinator, today – I’ll leave my phone on. If she’s still going in about 50 minutes, call me and leave a message.”

We talked a good deal about runaways during NST, and now here I am, my second day on the job, with my very own runaway. I am a little nervous, but mostly empowered by this sense of duty and responsibility. It feels like a big job, and just like Kurt Hahn’s philosophy that it is “criminal neglect” not to entrust students with responsibilities that show them that they are truly needed – knowing they will rise to the responsibility and the challenge – I, the inexperienced instructor, feel most capable when I feel most needed.

Since we have not yet started our expedition on the St. John’s, our campsite is near a dirt road, which is where I emerge after walking past our van and trailer. How far has she gone? I look left, I look right, I do not see her. My heart only skips one beat before I decide that whichever it is, I have got to get going, and I head right. Just around the bend, I see her. She is about 5’2’’, hair braided and pony-tailed, with her gigantic plastic gear-bag liner full of course clothes and bug spray slug over her shoulder like some misguided santa claus. I start jogging before I lose her again, but slow down to a walk some 30 yards behind her.

I follow her for a while, until she notices me. Then I begin talking, trying to use the levers we were taught in NST: where is your water? Your food? What is your plan? You know we have these things back at camp…but she is not having any of it.

“I know how to take care of myself. I’m going to the highway. I’ll be fine. I’m going home. I’m not hungry.”

I follow through on the plan of calling Joe, who tells me to keep trying and give him a call if she hasn’t given up in an hour.

Eventually, she stops and sits down on her bag of clothes. Relieved, I go up to her. She has stopped because she has seen a snake in the road up ahead.

“Should I go check it out, do you think?” I ask.

“Yeah, go check it out.”

“Alright.”

The snake is clearly dead as a doornail, but I decide to play on her fear a bit, because I do not want her to walk further away from camp (we have already walked at least a mile.)

“You know,” I say, “he’s not moving, but sometimes snakes can do that…you know, stay still for a long time, and then get vicious again. If I were you, I wouldn’t go too close to him.”

“You’re sure he’s not dead? Because he’s really not moving at all.”

“No, I’m not sure. I wouldn’t risk it if I were you.”

It works, for now, but she is smart enough to wait for a car to run over him – I wait and hope she changes her mind about walking away before a car runs over our very dead snake. We sit and chat in the shade of a palm for a while, and she tells me that she used to go camping with the girl scouts, and even went on a month-long canoeing trip with them. I hear about a brown recluse spider bite that got infected and how the resulting trip to the ER left a gaping hole in her leg. At this point I’m not sure what to believe, but what she describes sounds accurate and convincing enough – either that, or she is a very informed liar.

About twenty minutes passes, and two cars drive over our snake. “That snake is dead,” she says. I am hoping that I have kept my credibility by claiming to be unsure about its vivacity. I talk with her about how logical it would be to turn around, how I would really like to go back to camp but must keep her in sight and sound as part of my job, but she is not convinced. “You can go ahead and go back if you want,” she says, “I’m goin home.”

About five minutes later, a county sheriff’s car happens to drive by. Call me crazy, but a short black girl carrying a giant plastic bag followed by a tall white woman with a backpack and gallon-size water jug walking down an all-but-deserted dirt road at high noon looks a little strange. So he pulls over.

“They won’t let me call my grandma, and I don’t have to stay here because I’m not court-ordered!” Aja yells at the officer, approaching his car as soon as he rolls down the window.

The officer looks from me to her and back again and says, “look, y’all have to let her call her grandma.”

I walk up, trying to get a word in edgewise and putting on my most polite, assertive and professional tone. I give him my “letter of introduction” from our course director, explaining who I am and why I am qualified to be responsible for children in the wilderness. I also explain where we have come from and that we are not allowing Aja to contact her home by phone, because we think that at this point, it would just make her want to go home more – and we still have hope that she will stay and finish the program. In Aja’s case, her mother has already made a court date because of her behavior and multiple attempts to run away, and will enroll her in a longer residential program if she does not complete Outward Bound – I think she is aware of this, but none of it means anything to her, it seems. All she cares about is getting out of the woods, and repeats her plea to the officer.

“Officer, they won’t let me call my grandma! I am NOT court-ordered to be here! I have to go HOME!”

“Alright, why don’t you let me take y’all back to your camp, then we’ll see about the rest of this.”

Aja is satisfied with this, assuming it means she will be able to call her grandma and get out. When the sheriff’s car drops us off at the entrance to camp and then leaves, she is not happy. She is PISSED.

Kim finds us and lets us know that the rest of the group is getting ready to head out for canoe training on the lake. “Is there anything you need?” she says. It is about 12:30 and we have not eaten anything all day.

“Well – some granola?”

“Gottcha.”

She comes back in a few minutes with two bowls of granola, hand-sanitizer, and a gallon jug of water for Aja. We make a plan for me to keep Aja in my sight and try to join them on the lake if I can get her in a better space. I thank her and gobble up my granola in about three seconds. Aja takes two bites, and then something sets her off again – perhaps that she does not like granola and powdered milk – and she remembers that she is angry. She overturns her granola, empties out the entire bottle of hand-sani and throws it in the ditch across the road, followed by her gallon jug of water, of which she has drunk none. She then starts walking the opposite way down the dirt road, intending to catch the sheriff’s car and give him a piece of her mind so he can take her home.

I am getting tired of this game by now, but I follow. After about half a mile, a state law enforcement vehicle drives by. Apparently we are just attracting the authorities today.

This time, the vehicle approaches me first, and I speak with the officer.
“Yes sir, we are part of a wilderness program, just starting a canoeing expedition on the St. John’s. She’s having a little trouble today and said that she is going home. So I’m just following her to keep her in sight and trying to convince her to turn around and go back to camp.”

“Alright ma’am,” he says, “how about I go try and talk with her a moment?”

“That would be wonderful, thank you. I’ll be right behind you. Her name is Aja.”

He drives ahead 50 yards to where she is walking along the road. She has stashed her giant plastic bag in the ditch somewhere along her last route, but still, she is beginning to lose steam.

The officer is very kind and tries to get Aja to make a value judgment about why she is here and why she ought to go back to the program. It is really a very inspiring speech. I am impressed. Aja, to my embarrassment but not really to my surprise, yells at him through angry tears. She has gone from anger to hysterics, and I hope that we are reaching the crux of her misbehavior for the day.

“I’m sorry ma’am,” says the officer, “that’s really all I can do. I have to be going now, but give us a call if there’s anything else we can do to help.”

I thank him, and he continues driving down the dirt road. Aja sits down on the side of the road and the tears flow. I give her space – although looking back, I wonder if she needed comforting, if she would have been receptive to that at all. However, she was still belligerent enough to throw her shoes into the ditch.

“Well, she has to have shoes,” I thought. “If I don’t know what to do about anything else, I know that.” I descended into the ditch to fetch her shoes, and found that she had started walking back toward camp. This only lasted for a moment, however, as she soon decided it would be better to lay on her stomach in the middle of the road to finish her cry. Changing her mind again a minute later, she began trudging back toward camp in her stocking feet.

“Aja, I know you are mad, but you need to put your shoes on. It’s for your physical safety. I don’t want you to hurt your feet.”

“Get out of my face.”

I do not get out of her face, but hold her shoes directly in front of her face – perhaps not the best tactic. “Aja, you have to put your shoes on.”

“I said, get out of my FACE!”

Back at camp, I try just handing her the shoes. She throws them into the woods. She then enters camp – luckily it is empty at this point – and begins throwing gear. Gear bags are overturned, other objects thrown…when she starts emptying 5-gallon water jugs, I intervene by holding them right-side up when she grabs one.

“Look, Aja, this is our water supply. We need this to drink. Please throw something else. There are plenty of sticks.” I feel like I have been doing a pretty good job not reacting to her so far, but I don’t want to give the false impression that I am completely undisturbed by all of this or handling it all perfectly – at this point, at least, I am starting to get a little stressed, and the entire incident continues to be a learning experience. Read on, reader.

“You don’t understand! When I get upset, I get to thinking suicidal thoughts! I been Baker Acted because I get suicidal when I get UPSET. I want to talk to Ms. Baker! Let me call Ms. Baker. Let me call my grandma, she’ll come get me and take me home!”

Baker Acting is, I believe, a Florida-specific ordinance which allows (obligates?) a police officer to take persons threatening suicide into special custody, where they are kept in a mental institution for 72 hours. To prevent them from harming themselves, I presume. To my knowledge, this has been utilized fairly commonly by misguided youth to get out of whatever situation they are in at the moment that is displeasing to them. A girl that was supposed to be the eighth student on our course never showed up on registration day because she was “Baker Acted” the night before – presumably, to get out of coming to the program.

Aja sits down on someone’s gear bag and begins scratching her arm with a stick. We had a brief lesson on self-harm during NST and learned that it is certainly not to be taken lightly, and can be a behavior preceding suicidal thoughts or intentions. I am mildly concerned, and tell her to stop scratching herself. As an alternative, she picks up a couple pieces of p-cord (about half a cm in diameter), and begins winding one of them around her neck. I have gone from mildly concerned to a state of real alarm.

My body is tense and my mind is racing. “Aja, take that off your neck.” Oh my God, what if she really does choke herself, I think. “Aja, please take that off your neck.” She persists. I was told afterward by other instructors that there is no way she ever could have choked herself like that, but at the time it looked very concerning and I was not about to have a passed-out student on my hands. I went in for the grab. Reaching for the cord, I forgot that this girl is ANGRY. All I get is socked in the arm. I try again, and succeed in unwinding it from her neck. I breathe easier and stick the cord in my pocket, until I realize that she has another piece, and has begun trying to choke herself again.

Knowing she will not give this up willingly, and remembering the punch to my forearm, I grab her hand with one of mine and reach for the cord around her neck with the other, forgetting her feet are also a weapon to her. I get kicked in the crotch. I am not hurt so much as shocked. Another attempt and I have the p-cord and she has exhausted her supply. I look around camp for any other potential self-harm devices that I can pre-emptively take away, but find nothing other than many, many sticks. There are too many to get rid of – we are in the woods, after all – and she makes use of them, sitting on the ground, scratching away at her arm.

Now I am truly stressed and do not know what to do. I have talked to Joe at least once more during this time but have no plan other than to call him back in 20 minutes. I spend a few minutes trying to convince Aja to stop scratching herself, and taking several sticks from her grasp – a pointless endeavor, as she immediately finds another just as good on the ground.

Suddenly – Kim shows up. She is coming back to camp to get something they forgot for canoe training. We check in and I tell her what has been going on. I try to stay calm and focused, but the shock of getting hit overwhelms me and tears slip out. I turn away from where Aja is sitting and I think I hide it fairly well.

“Alright,” Kim says, “you go call Joe, tell him what’s up, I’ll talk with Aja. Do you think you can stay with her, or would you be more comfortable trading places with Alex?”

“Is Alex PAR certified?”

“No, but she’s had a little bit of experience.”

“What about you? Oh no- you’re the lead so you have to stay with the group, that’s right.”

“Yes.”

“Ok, maybe we should switch up. I’ll talk with Joe about it I guess.”

“And I’ll have a chat with Aja about not being violent anymore.”
I walk down the trail, out of sight, and call Joe.

“Okay,” says Joe, after hearing the update, “I’m going to have you let her call her mom. Get the number from her fast pack. I’ve been talking with her mom and she knows what’s going on. Don’t tell her this, but if she runs again, she’s done. It’s taken too much time away from the rest of the students. We’re going to have to remove her from course if she tries it again.”

“Joe – are you sure you want me to let her call her mom?” I have been told this entire time that I should absolutely NOT allow her to call her mom, and try to avoid showing the fact that I have a phone. But I suppose this is a difference scenario now that it’s gone on for this long.

I go back and check in with Kim. Up to this point I have been all about switching out with Alex, but suddenly I have a second wind and sense of duty – like I have to see it through and not give up because it is difficult. Plus, Alex doesn’t know anything about what has been going on all day – instructor communication error, I suppose.

“Okay,” Kim says, “Aja has told me that she will agree not to hit or kick anyone again today. Right Aja, can you agree to that in front of Miss Jennica?”
Aja grunts and we take that as a “yes.” I tell Kim of the plan from Joe, and soon she heads back down to the water.

“Are you sure you’re all right?”

“Yes, I’m fine. She’s calmed down now and I’m going to try to find us something to eat.”

“Good. You’re doing good. I love you!”

I tell Aja the news: she will be allowed to talk with her mother.

“I don’t wanna talk to her! I want to talk to my grandma!”

“Well Aja, you either get to talk to your mother or you get to talk to no one. Remember, my phone only calls Outward Bound numbers, and they can connect us with your mom, but no one else.” This is what I have told her about my phone, although I’m not sure if she buys it or not. I don’t like lying, but the purpose seems to outweigh the risks and my moral obligation against it in this case.
“Alright, let me talk to my mom.”

I hear her mom tell her to calm down, don’t run away, and other parts of a pep-talk. Aja cries some more, but afterward calms down. I begin looking for food, but most of today’s lunch has gone out with the canoes. I find us apples and leftover hotdog buns from last night’s dinner. We are so hungry, we gobble down mayonnaise-mustard-on-hotdog bun sandwiches. It is all quite funny and we make jokes about our sandwiches.

Now I sit down and am surprised to find that Aja is suddenly…calm. And very logical.

“Yes, I have an anger problem,” she tells me.

I suggest that we go for a walk to find her shoes and her gear bag innards while she tells me about it. So we walk. I find her shoes in the woods and she puts them on. Then we start down the road in search of her clothes. On the way, we chat about what happens when she gets angry, possible soothers, her counselor Ms. Baker, her family, and various other things about her life. After about half a mile, we reach the spot where Aja thinks she has left her gear bag, but a search of the ditch reveals nothing.

“Somebody must have taken it,” she says, “let’s go back.”

“Now wait a minute,” I say, “I think you dropped it a little further up the road.”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Well, let’s go have a look anyway.”

“Alright.”

We find the gear bag innards in the ditch about 200 yards up the road, and sit down in the shade to rest. I convince her to help me develop a contract for her to work on, including a couple steps for managing her anger and a restorative justice piece for all the group work she missed during the day – she agrees that helping put away canoes would be a good service to the group. I am a little surprised at how compliant she is being, but also relieved. I feel like I am finally getting somewhere – like somehow my tribulations of the morning are paying off, because this girl really is going to come back to the group.

Back at camp, we get a canoe ready to take out on the lake. Alex and Kim and the rest of the girls are playing the “Stinky Fish” game with a throw cushion and are almost done with canoe training. Aja is motivated by taking a dip in the lake to wash off the sand and dirt that now cover her body from lying in the middle of a dirt road. We go over paddle strokes briefly, and I make her practice them a few times before we dip. The lake is shallow and the bottom is two feet of slimy muck. I am not sure if the lake slime I am exchanging for my sand and sweat is making any difference, but at least it is cooling me off. Most of all, Aja seems happy, even when getting back in the canoe is a challenge, and that seems like a miracle.

We head for shore about thirty minutes later, around 4:00 pm, and I try to get Aja psyched up to move canoes before she officially re-introduces to the group. We are on track until the second canoe, when Aja gets tired. I encourage her to ask for help from Kitten, a lean, helpful 17-year-old who so far has a great attitude. Kitten agrees and two canoes make it to shore, with one to go. Aja sits down on a bucket in camp and is clearly not happy. I try to check in with her but get no response worth building on, so I leave her be and go interact with the other girls for the first time since I left that morning.

It is personal job time, and Alex asks me to take her spot in the kitchen for a moment while she talks with Wrya, who is still refusing to participate. Mac and cheese is on the menu tonight, and I have an extremely pleasant conversation in the kitchen with the very non-angry Kitten and Brittney.

And then, Aja is gone again. ……..to be continued………