On the Road Again

At the moment, I am sitting on my grandparent’s couch in Port Aransas, TX. Let me explain how I got here. I began my second course on January 25th, 2010 and finished it on February 26th. It was an amazing course – I’ll have some stories in a bit – during which I built good rapport with the students, felt my confidence and effectiveness as an instructor improve by leaps and bounds, got promoted to assistant instructor and signed a contract to stay on with Outward Bound Discovery for another nine courses over the next year and a half. Whew! On February 26th, after our final course debrief, I bid farewell to Yulee and drove the seven hours west to our base in Fairhope, AL with my friend and fellow instructor Jason Schmidt. It was fun to have some company for the first leg of the epic road trip I’d been turning around in my head for the past few weeks.

I went from a rigid schedule that demanded all of my attention to almost no schedule in a matter of a few hours – what freedom! I love the constant change-of-pace involved in the strange schedule of this job. I love the ability to work hard for something I believe in, and also have the time to fulfill my wanderlust. In Alabama, I planned out the next leg of my roadtrip and hung out with 5 other male OB instructors who had just finished two back-to-back veterans courses and were in the midst of celebrating. They were all from OB Wilderness (non-at-risk programs), and it was strange…neat…intriguing to feel connected to the larger OB community.

I woke in the morning to pouring rain, starting an hour earlier than I anticipated because my watch was still set to eastern coast time, and headed west toward Texas. I passed through Mississippi and Louisiana, where much of the interstate ran on long bridges over swampy land. I thought about how we are cutting corridors through wetlands and wilderness, dividing wildlife travel and cutting interior spaces in half. I was sad to be a participating in that, but I kept on, resolving to research it more in the future.

In Huston, I was engulfed in a giant cement octopus – highway bridges twisting here and there, hundreds of feet in the air. Six lanes of traffic barreled through this asphalt paradise, and the sun set in the distance. I felt like I was in the perfect setting for a science fiction movie – as if some southern super heros might at any moment come bounding over the trucks in pursuit of destruction or rescue, or perhaps the Millennium Falcon might land amongst the buildings rising off to the North.

The rest of my adventures will take me North, then West, then East, and finally South back to Florida to work a course in the Everglades. I’m planning to update along the way – after all this is vacation, and in the civilized world with instant access to computers and internet at my fingertips, I really have no excuse…;) At the moment, off to chill on the couch with my grandma. Having troubles with photos at the moment, but soon!