Ursula's Angels - Part III

And now, back to the story of Aja.

A few minutes later, I am in pursuit. Again. She is going fast this time, and I alternate between jogging and speed walking. I look back after about ten minutes of this and see Kim sprinting after me – remembering that we had neglected to make much of a plan this time. I divide my attention between letting Kim catch up to me and keeping Aja in sight. She’s carrying four granola bars. God bless her forethought. From my last conversation with Joe, this is Aja’s last shot. When I see that she is not turning around, I call base. We make a plan for them to come and get her. She is going home – or in her case, to the appointment her mother arranged with a judge, and possibly to a longer program. Joe will drive out to our campsite to pick her up around 7:00 pm, but not close enough for the other students to see – we don’t want an entire camp full of students thinking that if they just act up enough, they too will get to go home. Joe tells me to go tell Aja the plan, so that she will come back to camp. I inform her, and of course, she instantly becomes compliant. I inform her that she will not be allowed to enter camp or say goodbye to any of the other girls before she leaves – she does not care. And so, we walk back. Aja sits outside of camp until dusk, when Joe and her mother arrive. And that is the end of the story of Aja at Outward Bound. I dearly hope that she has found some direction, or something that works for her. For now, it is out of my hands.

Back at camp, Kim has gathered the other girls and informed them that they are rockstars. They have survived the first day and a half of outdoor living; she tells them, truthfully, that Aja will most likely be sent to a longer program because she chose not to complete this one. She gets the girls invested in finishing so that they can go home in 20 days. Wrya is still not participating, and while Aja is sitting out by the road, waiting to be picked up, she has inched her way out of camp. Alex, our assistant instructor, is in pursuit. In the meantime, I am eating dinner back at camp. It is about 80 degrees out, and we are sitting in long pants and long sleeves by the fire to keep the bugs away. I must laugh at the complete riduculousness of the things we do out on the river that make complete sense. The girls have learned that Jojo can sing, and she is giving a little concert by the fire. Oh, and Jojo can SING. She weighs about 90 pounds, but her voice is so rich and clear that if you closed your eyes you would swear it came from a grown woman. She goes from song to song, clearly enjoying herself, and the others applaud.

After dinner, I notice Cece complaining about washing everyone’s dishes that they have left on the sump screen. “How would you feel about talking to the group about this?” I ask her, not sure how she will respond. To my surprise, she sounds mildly interested in doing the group’s first CFR (concern, feeling, request – an assertive communication tool we use a LOT on course). I talk it out with her, catching the beginning of the approaching rainstorm. Luckily, Kim has thought to set up a tarp with one of the students, so we grab raingear and run to shelter. We think of Alex and Wrya, still out on the road on the dark, wet night. But, we proceed with the CFR and evening meeting around our kerosene lantern. About half an hour later, Alex and Wrya are back, wet but safe. As we head to bed – or rather, sprint, to attempt staying as dry as possible, I try to think back to the beginning of the day, amazed that it has only been one day, and not three for four, with all that has happened in the past twelve hours. But, I was proud of how I handled my second day of work and sleep straight through until dawn.




Day 3
First day on the St. John’s River. Wrya decided of her own accord, after a day and a half of refusing to participate, eat, or drink, to rejoin the group. She writes an ownership letter and reads it to the group, in addition to stating her commitment to finish course. And just like that, she is back, and a star student. She sets a great example for the other students throughout the rest of course. I guess there’s something to be said for just waiting someone out.

Loading the boats is tricky – we have not talked about this yet, and we are parked at a public boat launch where we must load the boats from a dock. This means one or two people in the floating canoes, and others dancing around each other on the tippy, floating dock. It is hot – HOT – and we struggle to communicate with airboats coming in and out of the boat ramp. If you have never experienced the airboat, they are perhaps the loudest boats on earth, with the hugest fans. I am navigator for the day, and I attempt to teach Taylor a hasty navigation lesson, which I have never done before, and which probably would have gone over a little better if it was not 90 degrees out and if I had a better idea of where we were going. You see, the place where we were setting out at was a giant maze of reeds and river cabbage. Although the map showed a river with a single path, the river branched and wound between this tall greenery which allowed no view of the surrounding area – which, by the way, was just more reeds, and the occasional muddy cow pasture. It surprised us the first time, to hear mooing among the reeds. But there they were, cows right along the river, hanging out with white birds perched on their horns and hip bones – what I later guessed were cattle egrets. “Kim,” I whispered, “I’m not really sure where to go – the river doesn’t match the map…I just keep turning whichever way will take us north.” Neither Kim nor Alex – nor any other OB course – had ever paddled this section of the St. John’s before.

A few hours later, we reach what I think could be our campsite – at any rate, it is a place to camp, and we scout the area. We give the students their first instructor challenge: a silent boat unload. I love silent challenges, because everything usually gets done faster. The girls had those boats unloaded in under 16 minutes – a task that, with verbal communication, would have taken much longer on an average day. We circle up and are making a plan for the rest of the evening, when Cece flags in: “Um, excuse me, there’s lots of frogs around here, and they are poison.” Our student nicknamed Kitten is terrified of frogs and seems to have convinced the others that they are dangerous – there are a good number of frogs at this site, but none of them are actually poison. In honor of this comment, the campsite is dubbed “Poison Frog” over a dinner of shepherd’s pie.
We finish the day with a bead ceremony in the moonlight. My favorite.



Wind in the Willows

There were other adventures during the rest of our 20-day wilderness course, including several all-night paddles and a three-night layover at a place called Cow Island where we waited out extreme winds in hopes of crossing Lake Harney without capsizing. The first night at Cow Island (where we found no cows but lots of cabbage palms), we noticed the wind was really picking up during evening meeting. We were gathered around the fire, when one of the students commented: “Um, instructors…the tents are blowing away.” And they were. We jumped up and caught one before it rolled over and one before it blew toward the fire. These once-rigid structures covered in nylon had suddenly been transformed into giant kites that were determined to catch the gusts of air bursting at us from the nearby lake. We held them in place by weighting them with 5-gallon water jugs in each tent, after forcing them upright against the wind. All we lost in that fiasco, luckily, was one bandana, which was incinerated by the fire in our rush to save the tents – we found only the corner of that poor bandana. We awoke the next day hoping to set out on the lake, but alas – more wind. We took that day to do a mini-solo, hoping the winds would calm down by that night. No such luck – the winds were worse. That night, at about 3am, Wrya came “knocking” at our tent: “Excuse me! Our tent is blowing over!” I was by the door, and it was my turn to get up. Could the tent really blow over with three girls inside of it? It could. There was the forest-green nylon, flopping on top of two sleeping (?) girls and two full water jugs. I had Wrya hold the poles, while I lugged over the Ubu, our giant ammo-can full of paper work. I took out two of the stakes, which were doing do good in the sandy soil, and tied the elastic ropes to that heavy ubu. It wasn’t pretty, but it held all night. The next morning, we were up early – we had decided that we had to try the lake crossing no matter what. So we set out – the wind had gone down a little, but on the lake it was still blowing strong. This was also the students’ first day on Main, when meant one less instructor steering. I was navigator for the day, in boat one. Kim and Alex were in the last boat, and there were two student boats in between. It was a struggle from the beginning. Not only was it windy, it was cold. We were all wearing our yellow rubber rainsuits to keep warm. Jojo refused to paddle. Cece paddled but refused to get out of the boat to help her boat partner, Taylor, drag the boat through the shallow water before the lake. Brittnay struggled with steering and their boat went to and fro in the waves that covered the lake. Our boats were spread out much further than they should have been, despite my efforts to keep everyone together. We paddled for the better part of three hours along the shore of the lake, in the end measuring our progress at about ½ of a mile of the 6 miles it would take us to finish the crossing. We broke for lunch on a small peninsula. The students were stressed out, and Kim pulled out an amazing teachable moment called “Lessons from Geese.” She lined all of the students up in a V and told the story about geese flying in a V, and when Cece-goose was shot by a hunter, another goose would stay with her and help her until they could catch up with the group again – telling the students to care for each other through difficult times. This became a sort of teachable joke throughout course: “remember that time when Cece got shot??” When we set out again, the waves seemed worse. The student boats kept turning sideways to the waves and almost swamping. I was having trouble steering myself – it was taking all of my effort just to keep up straight, much less make forward progress. Kim called us back. “It’s too dangerous out here,” she said. “Someone is going to capsize.” So we made a plan to go back to where we had come from, and look for a more protected campsite along the river. We spent the rest of the afternoon paddling around the river upstream of the lake, looking for a campsite, which we never found. By the end of the day, we had some very frustrated students on our hands. At one point, Cece and Taylor’s boat went into the bushes one too many times, and they just sat there. Sitting in boat 1 with Kitten in the bow and Jojo in the duffer seat, I tried to refer to lessons from geese and not leaving people behind. Finally, Jojo was the only one to respond. Grabbing the extra paddle, our smallest girl was determined to go back and help Cece and Taylor. When our boat arrived, Cece released the fullness of her frustration by cussing me out and throwing a paddle. Apparently she thought I was taking them in circles because I didn’t know where I was going – logic was not going to work with her in this stage (the truthful “we were looking for a campsite” argument meant nothing in that moment), but somehow we got her to start paddling again, and returned once again to Cow Island. Jojo was so determined to set up camp that she dragged an entire canoe across the sand by herself to turtle it further inland. I may never see such a sight again, a 90 pound girl dragging a 17-foot canoe that I can barely carry by myself.

The next day, not able to make our miles because of the wind, we arranged to be picked up at a nearby highway, and dropped off half a mile upstream of our solo site, which was protected from the wind. It was an exhausting day of unloading and loading and unloading and loading again, but in the end it was the best we could do without putting our crew in imminent danger.


My Sponge Experience

The rest of the course had its ups and downs for me. It was very much a learning experience. I put forth a lot of effort, had some struggles, and soaked up everything I could like a sponge. My biggest struggle was a loss of rapport with many of the students, which led to a great deal of blatant and passive-aggressive disrespect that I did not know how to deal with very effectively.

At OB Discovery, we work a lot with something called Reality Therapy, which I explained in an earlier post. The first step in this technique is building rapport with each student – essentially, getting them to respect and trust you enough that when you call them out on a behavior, they don’t completely turn against you or lose all their investment in course. Building rapport ranges from telling riddles in the canoe to active listening and taking care of students needs, to following through on what you say you will do.

I don’t know how it started, exactly, but something about me seemed to strike Taylor the wrong way, and she very soon decided that she did not like me. This spread to several of the other girls, and I couldn’t figure out quite how to fix it. I had good times and less good times. I laughed and had a good time, taught some good lessons, did my best to hold the students accountable, and take some useful things away from course. However, through my struggles with losing rapport, I learned some very important lessons. I learned not to take student’s behaviors personally, and to not be offended by disrespect. I learned to deal with behaviors by simply setting consequences and following through with the expectations that have been set by myself and other instructors, instead of reacting emotionally. I learned to WANT students to act out – to a degree – in order to work with their behaviors and teach them to handle emotions and stress in a more productive manner. I learned what “figure eighting” is, and how my attempts at convincing students logically was really a quiet sort of argument that gave them power over me. Or, as Sandy would say, gave them the chance to think about “how awesome they are, and how much you suck.” Which, of course, is exactly what happened. I built back some rapport during solo, during those 48 hours when the girls were all camped out by themselves, by having some great discussions with them when they just wanted someone to talk to. I came away from this course proud of having completed it and having given my best effort, but also tired and in great need to rebalance my “love and belonging” need after an emotionally exhausting month.


Alex during our all-things-orange Halloween dinner during follow-up.

Follow-Up

After the girls went home, we began our ten days of follow up. This was an interesting experience in which we instructors, as well as our Program Coordinator, an experience social worker, visited the students and their families in their homes and schools in the surrounding counties. This is as close to social work as I have ever, and may ever, come. Learning more about the environments in which most of these kids had grown up, I was less surprised at their behaviors. Some had no boundaries, some had way too many, and no hope of earning any privileges. Only one of the students still had a father in her life at all – and in that situation there was lots of arguing with the student’s mother, when they communicated at all. We tried to help the parents set up a Training-Main-Final progression of responsibilities and privileges for the kids to earn…doing chores and being respectful and having family meeting might earn them the chance to talk on the phone for a certain amount of time, etc. We encouraged the parents to set consequences so that the kids would know exactly what was coming when or if they stepped outside the boundaries. We also did a lot of paperwork – never-ending paperwork. ;)

In the end, I hope the students took something away from course. Maybe it will slowly seep in over the coming months – maybe it will dawn upon them several years down the road. I wish I could say I changed the world, or even the world for one kid, in 30 days. But that is not really what our program does – people generally don’t change completely in 30 days. But we do raise the questions that could start the process. And that’s something I’m glad to take ownership for.

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………

Ursula's Angels, Part I

Sitting here in Fairhope, Alabama, I’m comfy and cozy in the art-studio-turned-Outward Bound-base, listening to the ends of hurricane-turned-tropical-storm Ida whip through the trees outside. It finally feels like fall. I celebrated by cooking steaming veggie soup yesterday (and learned that one does not have to purchase vegetable broth – one simply needs to boil lots of vegetables…) and by taking a bike ride to the pier before the storm hit. It was a soggy one, and the locals I met did not seem concerned about the storm. Today, still rainy, I helped the instructional team and course director from a FINS course prepare to get back out on the river (all of their kids were sent home for a day because of the hurricane). Tomorrow, I will paddle with them and the course director, Adam, for two days on the Kenechta River. I will be observing and helping out where I can, following the progress of their course, which started about a week ago.

As we were packing our food for the river this afternoon, Adam asked me: “So, how was your first course?”

“Well, what would you like to know?” I said, not knowing how to summarize. The details are still recent and vivid, and the ‘overall’ statements still very general – to avoid falling into story after story – perhaps in a few months I will look back and strike a happy medium.

Overall, it was an experience that left me wanting to come back for more. Not because it was easy, but because it was hard. I saw holes in my own instructing that need filling and received the encouragement to help fill them. I also remember moments when I was able to shine, laughter with students and the other instructors, good debriefs, crazy stories, and connecting the wilderness trip with our students’ real lives as we visited their homes and schools during follow-up. I didn’t realize I would be getting so involved with Social Work, but – here I am! I dealt with a lot of cranky teenagers with a lot of issues in their lives, who did not want to be in the wilderness for twenty days, and who often didn’t really like me. I got hit and kicked once, called names and swear words multiple times, got enough dirty looks to plant a garden. I also played games, sang at the top of my lungs, painted nails, paddled by the light of the moon and stars – and was given the privilege of looking into and being a part of the lives of seven incredible young women for four weeks.

One day, when I was getting frustrated about spending time with girls who were most certainly pissed at me for some reason or another, Kim, my lead instructor, gave me the best advice I received all course: “You just have to keep on loving them unconditionally.” No matter how many times they cuss you out or kick the bucket or roll their eyes, simply deal with the behavior, and then keep loving them and caring for them. They will notice. Or, maybe they won’t. But keep loving them. It’s the only way to stay sane.

Below, I have written some basic information about our course. Then, for each day of wilderness expedition, I have typed out what was written in our Course Log. Some of this is pretty shorthand and may not make sense if you are not familiar with OB lingo and routines. However, below each course log entry, I have typed out a more detailed explanation of the day, especially during the first couple of days, explaining our routines, our students, and commenting on significant events. All from my biased perspective, of course…but that’s what this blog is all about, so I’m allowed. ;)

Base: Scottsmoor, FL (about an hour east of Orlando)
Course Number: F-371. FINS. An all-girls course.
Lead Instructor: Kim
Assistant Instructor: Alex aka Lexi
Intern: Jennica
Wilderness dates: 10/9/09-10/28/09
Follow-up dates: 10/29/09-11/6/09

*Some of the names of students may have been changed.

Day 1
Course start, transition circle with parents, staff, students, and instructors, Duffle shuffle in the a.m., nothing found. Swim check at 3pm. All students except Aja passed swim check – mind made up that she is going home when talks to Dan about conversation with her family. Transport to Hatsbill campsite. Locals brought airboat on land after camp set-up but turned around to leave when they saw camp se tup. Aja on two hour tstep back/separation, contracted for 100% participation for the rest of the evening. Failed her contract. Students bug stress bad but get through evening routine; can opener broke; some students did not eat dinner._______________________________________________________________________________
Even with all of our preparation of gear and plans and consistancies during our three-day brief, course seemed to begin in a rush, with last-minute everything going on at base before heading to the local park to meet with families at 8:30am. At the park, we met seven girls who said goodbye to their parents – all mothers – in an appreciation circle run by our Course Director, Dan. As typical of many oB course starts, it seems, the staff introduced each other in a chain of appreciations. Then each mother/daughter pair was instructed to introduce each other with an positive comment. This caused tension to seep into the rope we held in the circle, as many were here due to broken down relationships with their parents, and most did not want to be present at all. I sat on the edge of my seat and Ciara’s turn approached. Previously, as we had sat together on picnic tables with each girl and her mother to establish one goal in each of three areas – educational, social, and family – Ciara and her mother had so much tension between them that they refused to speak to each other, make eye contact, or even sit on the same side of the table. Later known to us as Cece, Ciara came up with “my mom’s got on a pretty brown shirt today,” which Dan tried to push to something more sincere, with little success. Other girls came up with more meaningful statements and the moment passed, but not unnoticed.
Back at base, Duffle Shuffle went on quietly. I was surprised at how compliant the girls were Because of the “at risk” population, there are very specific requirements about what students can and cannot bring on course. Students sit on one side of the room, on old desks in the screened-in building, while one instructor calls out the needed items: “three t-shirts…two pairs of long pants…” while others retrieve the items from the girls and place them across the room on blue dry-bags: the only personal space they will have for the next 20 days. Each item is patted and shaken to check for cigarette and other contraband. Finally, the girls are told to stand and shake out t-shirts and shorts. Perhaps they are so quiet because they are in shock.
Snack is served – cheap PB-filled cheese crackers. Most girls throw away at least half of their packet of crackers, something that will become a great joke later as they devour these same crackers on the river, learning to be less picky under the stress of paddling and camping.
We move into our first initiatives: traffic circle and a “jobs scramble”, where we challenge the students to group together tasks such as preparing dinner and collecting firewood into seven different rotatable jobs, each named after a strong, famous woman. This whole job scramble thing was my idea, and I’m a little nervous as to whether it will work or not, but luckily Kim knows the traditional jobs so well that during her debrief she makes sure that no one is double-booked with daily tasks. Normally, jobs come pre-designed by instructors. The job normally known as crew chief is named Sharron Osborn – she is responsible for keeping everyone on task and motivated, as well as doing some of the group’s “dirty work” such as digging and filling in the team’s “100 hole,” or, more eloquently put, the “field toilet.” The Navigator becomes Sacajawea, the cook is Rachael Ray, and the assistant chef and tubby-scrubby (dish washer) is named Whitney Huston. Our Water Medic is called Ariel, the journalist is Bella (from Twilight), and Smokey, the lady in charge of the fire, is called Lava Girl (from the classic motion picture “The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl”).
After loading our canoe trailer, we introduce van expectations (knuckles-up to the ceiling for buckle-up check, and two minutes of silence for safety and driver sanity upon take-off) before heading to swim-check at the KOA and then to Hatsbill, our first campsite. All the girls pass the swim check except Aja, who insists that she is going home and refuses to get into the pool.
At Hatsbill, the ants are furious. They swarm our feet as if our toes were made of sugar, and they bite hard. I mean, HARD. With each bite comes a fluid-filled pimple that itches like crazy and doesn’t go away for at least a week.
The first four days of course involve so much teaching and learning that it is almost overwhelming – in addition to getting to know the kids’ personalities, strengths, and issues. This night they learn hard skills such as setting up tents and tarps, how to set up and use our field kitchen, how to perform all of the jobs we assigned that morning, how to carry a canoe, how to properly close a gear-bag, and if it weren’t for the close proximity of a port-o-potty at this particular spot, we would have taught them all about pooping in the woods. As it was, that lesson came two days hence – our first night on the river with 100 holes – and just to see their reaction and make sure they were all paying attention, Kim, Alex and I prepared this lesson first: addressing the group in a very serious manner, we explained that to poop in the 100 hole, we would be using the “buddy” system. One needed two buddies to perform the task property, we said. The trios were to link arms back-to-back – we demonstrated – then squat down together over the hole, and go. We got some funny looks before we explained to them the real way this task is accomplished – well, never with a buddy.
…………..to be continued…………..

Hello again!

Dear Friends,

Just in case you were wondering whether or not I have dropped off the face of the earth, disappeared into a black hole, or fallen into the river, I have not! I am alive and well and thriving. I am working on a post about my first course, but there is so much to tell that I have not yet completed it. I finished course on November 6, and have relocated to the Fairhope, AL base until November 27. I am doing support work here for a FINS course, which means that I am helping out the course director doing whatever needs to be done, and meeting up with the group on the river for solo and river visit, but am not out there the entire time. I'm up early tomorrow to pick up the group with the van and trailer, so I can't stay long, but would like to share a picture of my co-instructors (Alex and Kim) and I from my first course. This was taken at the Scottsmoor base during follow-up, late one night when we stayed up till all hours doing paperwork! I didn't take my camera on the river this trip because it is not waterproof and I wasn't totally confident that I could keep things dry, as everything got soaked during NST. Hopefully I'll have some pictures from the field in the near future, however. Ale ta-ta!

New Staff Training (NST) - Part III

Welcome to the final episode of the NST saga. It was just so much to take in in ten days. Like a powerload experience. I don't even know what a powerload is, and in fact may have just made that up...but that is the word that comes to mind.

The Daily Flow

This might give you a better picture of a typical day on the river. The Daily Flow is different for every course, as much of the specifics are determined by the instructional team in charge. However, the flow we used during training looked something like this:

Wake up and get everything out of tents (5 min)
Take down tents (10 min)
Morning meeting, snack, and 1-10 check-in (How are you doing? 1=horrible, 10=great)
Stretch Circle (student choose stretches)
House of Gain (abs, push-ups, and “mystery exercise”)
Run (start at 15 min and increase 2 min each day)
Dip/Bucket Baths (10 min)
Gear Bag Time (10 min; students are only allowed to get into gear bags twice a day at specified times)
Personal jobs around camp – set up tubby line, cook, navigation brief, etc
Load Boats – first 90%
Breakfast! (30 min)
Load Boats – last 10%
Navigation Brief w/ entire team
Paddle, Paddle, Paddle
Lash canoes together for lunch on the river
Debrief on the river (students might journal or read)
Paddle, Paddle Paddle
Arrive at camp! (hopefully before dark!)
Camp set-up
Gear Bag Time
Personal Jobs
Dinner!
Evening meeting around the fire
GTB!


Behavior Sims and Instructor Blocks

From day 3 through day 7 of NST, we were grouped into teams of three, and each group was given two half-day long blocks of time to be the instructors. Our trainers, Katie and Jinky, then took on the roll of students along with the rest of the group. However, not only did they take on the roll of students, they took on the roll of students with particularly 'interesting' behaviors. During each morning or afternoon, there was a scheduled behavior simulation that the 3-person instructor team would need to deal with in addition to running the daily flow and getting the team out onto the river or into the next day's campsite.

The first round of I-blocks and Behavior Sims were a bit nerve-racking, but turned out to be more than manageable. Imagine going from almost zero responsibility to being responsible for the entire group, considering you’re operating on little sleep, minimal experience, working with new people, and based on your performance, you may or may not have a job at the end of all of this. Definitely in my learning zone. But, like most things in the world of experiential ed (and I would argue overall), getting ones toes wet is the hardest part. Luckily, it seemed like we dove in head first. The behaviors sims weren’t anything out of the ordinary at first – non-participation, bullying, stealing food -- although they got a bit crazier during the second round. I especially enjoyed participating in the behavior sims as a “student.” I got to do this at least twice, being assigned a behavior characteristic (such as bullying Nicole about not liking spiders) to play out as I wished. Oh, I had fun acting bad.

During day 4 of training, as I was acting out the part of the bully, we paddled about six miles down the Bayou Jezzamine – a little tiny rivulet on the map. It was my first bayou experience and I was excited. We twisted and turned down the jungle-like waterway, and as we went we were engaged in the climax of a several-day-long game of “Killer.” If you are not familiar with this game, it goes like this: everyone draws a card. In the pile of cards is one face card, and one ace. The face card is the “killer.” If the killer winks at someone, that person must die a dramatic death 10-15 minutes later. The ace is the “doctor.” The doctor can magically heal people who have been winked at before they die their dramatic death. The goal is to figure out the killer before they murder everyone. Well, when we drew cards, I pulled out the king. And I bided my time. How to wink at people in canoes without the answer being obvious? I waited for opportune moments during gunwale-ups and lunch when many boats were together. I called over a friend’s boat under the guise of wanting a different-sized paddle. I winked at my boat partner because he saw me wink at someone else. At one point I had a bug in my eye, which afterward someone thought was a ploy to wink at someone else, but that was genuine – I actually got a bug stuck in my eye. I was down to two living member of the crew when someone found me out. All this time I was also bullying Nicole about not liking spiders. I got to be sneaky and stealthful and bad all in one afternoon. What a glorious change of pace.

As we were paddling down the Bayou Jezzamine, it rained. At first it just teased us, raining on and off – not enough to make me want to don the full banana-colored rubber rain suit I was issued. But in the end, the clouds prevailed, and the rain did not cease. At this point, everything is wet. It rained so hard we had to bail out our boat. I put on my banana suit and was surprised at how much I enjoyed myself despite myself and almost everything I owned being soaked or damp. (Cross that – my sleeping bag and a few clothes stayed dry in my dry bag – but those that got wet didn’t dry for several days.) The rain was so thick and so unrelenting that it silenced all other noises, including our own voices, and all that existed was the river and my paddle and the rain. Forward, stroke, forward, stroke. I was in love with the intensity of it and began to sing, because no one could hear me over the sound of the rain against the river. Mother Nature, you are still Queen.

The second round of instructor blocks began with a bang when we arrived at out campsite on day 6. It was a beautiful sandbar campsite with a view of the river, where fish would periodically jump full-flung out of the water. That is not an exaggeration. I saw them. Jinky played the part of the student that afternoon, and his behavior sim was extreme non-compliance. He just blew up. “Man, f*$% this s#@*! F#%* you, instructors! Why do I always have to do everything? Jinky do this, Jinky do that, man f$*% you!” Et cetera. The rest of us continued business as usual, watching the show on the side-line of course, and slogging our way through until the debrief after dinner. I was just playing student that day, but my turn came the next afternoon.

That evening, the instructor block that had handled Jinky’s cursing and yelling act passed the torch to the next instructional team in a ceremony that became one of my favorites during the trip. I love ceremony when it is done right. Down on the sand beach, under a sky alight with stars, the Smokin’ Axels flag was passed to the new instructors. Each walked through a tunnel of headlamps to receive this emblem of our team’s full value contract. And as they walked silently down to the shore to take up the flag, we began to sing:

As I went down to the river to pray
Studying about that good old way
And who shall wear the starry crown
Good Lord, show me the way

Come on brothers and let’s go down
Come on down, don’t you want to go down,
Come on brothers, let’s go down,
Down in the valley to pray.

And in that moment I knew: this is where I am supposed to be. It was beautiful.

The next day was fairly uneventful, although it saw us leaving around lunchtime (ahem, 3:00) for our next campsite- not ideal. Simon, Emily and I took over the reigns for the very last instructional block of the trip that afternoon. We made good time, but still only managed to get to our campsite as dusk was falling. Fish were jumping like crazy. Every few seconds, it seemed, I saw and/or heard a fish jump entirely out of the water. “Where do these fish get to be so agile?” I thought. “What kinds of fish are these?” As Jesse took a leek in the cut-out orange juice container that served as a bailer (one of the few reasons I am still jealous of men while camping), a fish almost landed in our boat of its own accord.

In the dimming light, we saw the dock that marked out campsite. We were camping on private land – owned by a friend of OB – which consisted of a small white house (with space to pitch our tents beside it) and an enormous wooden dock across from a turtle preservation area.

Jinky and Katie gathered the rest of the team as Simon and Emily and I passed out snack (corn nuts) and decided on a plan for unloading boats in the dark – complicated by the fact that none of the students are allowed to have their own headlamp/flashlight, and that the boats had to remain tied up to the docks instead of on shore. Jinky and Katie broke their circle. “Behavior Sim 3 has begun.” Now the game was on. Jinky was the first to show the signs and symptoms: sad face, little responsiveness, wanting to go home. I had a homesickness case on my hands. I let Jinky take a step-back and tried to get him to talk to me a few minutes later. No problems – I’ve dealt with this before. Until I noticed that three or four other students were also on step-backs. I consulted with Simon and Emily. “What happened to Kristin, and Jim, and Luke, and Nicole?” we asked each other. Until we realized: they’re all on step-backs. They’re all playing homesick…who is unloading the boats?

Only JoAnna was left unloading the boats – the rest of our team had gone limp with homesickness fever. Until JoAnna quit in frustration, and admitted that she was homesick too. Luckily, by that time, we had Jinky and a couple of other students back on their feet, feeling better and getting dinner ready. It was a whirlwind, and over before we could carry out all of the restore and discussion we had planned for the evening: our final dinner on the river, “Jinky’s mystery meal” of cous-cous, dried broccoli, tomato sauce, and mashed potatoes – world’s strangest shepherd’s pie, was served. We sat down to a hot-seat debrief, and then moved on to the main event of the evening: our transition to Final.

The entire team moved out onto the dock, where earlier that evening a full harvest moon had risen in a bold orange over the majestic, silent expanse of river we now faced. Now, at midnight, the moon had made its transition to silver goddess and had risen high in the night sky. We faced it. Behind us were Jinky and Katie, offering us the words of Oriah Mountain Dreamer’s “The Invitation” to begin the Final leg of our journey.

"It doesn't interest me what you do for a living
I want to know what you ache for
and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me how old you are
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool
for love
for your dreams
for the adventure of being alive. …

I want to know if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand on the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
"Yes."
….

As Jinky’s voice boomed over the water with conviction and passion for the meaning of the poetry that flew from his lips, a single bird swooped over the silver water. It cut across the path of the moon reflected in its depths, and again I looked up. “Yes,” I thought again. “This is me.”

“This is what I was made to live for.”

At the end of the poem, we were each given an orange bead to put on our double-fisherman bracelet alongside the blue one we had received for Main. The orange – to hold my memory of the moon that night. And orange to be the fire of Outward Bound. We were only to accept the bead if we were willing to carry and to pass on that fire. We were each given a bead – not to keep, but to give away. Sometime on the river the next day, we were to pass along our fire bead to another, and so continue the circle of energy and compassion that encompasses OB.



Night Paddle

We walked from the dock, ears full of poetry and eyes full of moonlight, back to the campfire, where Katie explained our final task. It was now almost 1:00 a.m. Sometime between 7:00 and 8:00 a.m. that same morning, we were to arrive at our pick-up point at Muir State Park, 11 miles down the river. Katie showed us where to go on the map, and left us to make a plan. We would navigate, decide our departure time, and organize the re-packing of all the gear. The debate ensued: to leave now, and guarantee ourselves enough time to arrive on time, or to sleep for a while, and then depart. I was of the former persuasion. We had been averaging 2-4 miles per hour in canoes thus far – in the daylight, with help on navigation if we got stuck. However, being strongly outvoted, the team decided to sleep for one hour and break camp at 2:15 a.m.

Just before heading to our tents, Jesse points to the river and says “Look!” There were Katie and Jinky, paddling away in their canoe. Inside of their now nearly-empty tent we found an emergency cell-phone, a note, and a back-packer’s cheesecake made on the underside of a Frisbee. We were on our own.

We arose at 2:15 and started loading boats. By 3:00 we were nearly ready, and re-juvinated our blood sugar with a cheesecake ceremony – nine sporks digging into one sugar-laden Frisbee. Excellent. At 3:23 we hit paddle to water, trying to make miles as fast as we could. Luckily, weather was on our side that night.

Around 5:00 a.m. we came to a confluence in the river. We came to what seemed to be a dead end, and our navigator informed the group that we were probably in a small inlet, and that we needed to go back and turn around to find the main river again. We did, but our location still didn’t make sense. We took bearings on compasses and passed maps around to try to determine where we were, but to no avail. We went back to explore our original position, but found the same result: a dead end. We again returned to our second guess. We sent a boat out to “scout out” the bend ahead to see if we could get a better bearing. At this point I was very frustrated, like many in the group – in my particular case, I was thinking “If you all had tried listening to me at the beginning, we would have left earlier and had time for mistakes like this!” As it was, we were running out of time. I was also bothered by the fact that we had broken our promise to follow policy by letting one boat go ahead of the group (we were supposed to stay within one boat length of each other).

Luckily, my boat partner, JoAnna, had an excellent sense of humor that turned complaints into four-letter words and four-letter words into laughs, and laughs into a positive, determined attitude. And there was Simon in the boat behind us, a kindred spirit always ready with a joke or comment to make me laugh off the situation. Around 5:30 Simon noticed the colors begin to appear in the east. “There’s the sun,” he said. Now it was on. We knew we had at least 6 miles to go, and not much time. The group had come to the verge of falling apart, but with the light of day, we got it together. We decided to try our original route one last time. It worked. The river bent sharply to the right, a feature that, without the help of daylight, we had been unable to see and unwilling to explore.

The waterway opened up to a wide expanse of river leading to the Gulf, as buildings and powerlines and fishermen began to appear with the sunrise. The wind picked up, the birds came out, and we hauled our canooty-booties as fast as they would go, stopping only once to pee off the sides of the boats. At 7:55 we crossed underneath the giant I-10 bridge that connects Mobile, Alabama to Fairhope across the bay on which we were now paddling our tiny crafts. The entrance to Muir State Park was not clear, but by good fortune and 9-minded map-reading skills, we found the inlet that led us to Katie and Jinky and the 15-passenger van at 8:02 a.m. Luckily, the 2-minutes-past-due was not in our debrief that evening, and there was much rejoicing. We made it.

It was 8:00 a.m., although with our internal clocks disturbed by one hour’s sleep, we couldn’t tell exactly what time it was. We stopped at the gas station at 9:30 a.m., and JoAnna bought herself a hot dog. Jesse bought candy for the group with $10 he’d found on the ground. We had a long day ahead – gear clean-up was a three-hour ordeal. Each gear-bag, bucket, and piece of rain-gear had to be scrubbed in giant black tubs which, when we finished, looked as if they had been dipped to the bottom of the river. I was perfectly at home with a laundry brush and a board, although – I have never scrubbed so many rubber suits in my life. Still, it was a joyous day, with music, chatter, and laughter over last night’s adventure.

That evening, we were re-united with the other team and were assigned the challenge of a joint “craftsmanship dinner.” This meant we were to come up with the craftiest menu, presentation, and atmosphere we could, using the few materials that we had. It turned out spectacular. With vines from behind the shed, tea-lights from the dollar store, and headlamps illuminating gallon water-jugs, we served up veggie spaghetti, and – I cannot describe to you the atmosphere of that night. It was as if someone had stopped time and all that existed were those people and those moments – “look at this community that you have created,” someone spoke. And we looked. It didn’t have many things or expensive tastes. But it had diversity, it embodied integrity, it was alive with compassion, it included everyone present, and it was dripping with excellence. We looked around, and we saw that these simple surroundings had been made beautiful by these qualities – the values taught at every Outward Bound school – and that they had come alive to us in these past ten days.

“There is more in you that you know.”
- Kurt Hahn

Outward Bound Discovery 101

To help you all better understand the program I am working for, I would like to share some of the basic information and terms I learned during NST. It will help things make a lot more sense, I think, and will help me so that I can talk about them later without feeling as if I must be confusing people. If this seems a little bit “drier” than some of my other entries, it is because I was trying to be efficient. Not all of the information here is necessarily applicable to Outward Bound in its entirety, as it is a nation-wide (world-wide, actually) program, and I can only speak of what I know. So here are the basics of Outward Bound Discovery, which is made up of the four bases in Alabama and Florida, where I will be working.

Course Tools

In OB Discovery there is a fairly well-set curriculum that we present to our students. This curriculum is divided in to two parts: Outdoor Education and Life Skills Management. Outdoor Education is pretty simple – all the “hard” skills such as setting up a tent, paddling a canoe, tying a trucker’s hitch, etc fall into this category. Life Skills Management deals to a large degree with assertive communication, decision making, and positive leadership skills.

To help students practice assertive communication, a specific set of “course tools” has been designed for them to use. During NST, we again learned about these course tools through experience. The first day at camp, one member of our team (“S”) happened to trip over another member of our team (“M”) while M was putting away the dishes. S did not apologize, and M got upset. Our trainers immediately called a “circle-up!” and introduced to the group the oft-used CFR.

C- Concern
F – Feeling
R – Assertive Request to the person or group

This is an extremely structured way for one person to express frustration to another person or group of people without the concern exploding into an all-out attack. The person practicing the CFR is only allowed to address the three questions above, with the stipulation that the concern and feeling be authentic and un-offensive, and the request be reasonable. When they are finished speaking, the person or people being addressed are asked: “Can you honor that request? Flag in if you can honor it.”

“Flagging in” to a circle-up means that you stick your fist into the center of the circle. It is just like raising your hand, except that in OB we go camping a lot, and we do not like to raise hands because everyone’s armpits usually smell bad. So we flag in.

Other assertive communication tools used during a program include:

WOMPs: Used when two people are simultaneously frustrated with each other.

W – What’s up?
O – Ownership. What can you “own” or take responsibility for in this situation?
M – Walk a Mile in their Moccasins. How would you feel if you were the other person?
P – Plan. What are you going to do in the future?

This is such an amazing tool because it precludes any sort of blaming or fighting. It gets right to the point and addresses the feelings of both parties without dramatizing either.

Step-Backs: A student can choose to take a “step-back” for any reason if they feel as though they cannot participate with the group at a certain time. If they miss out on an activity that includes work, such as running or setting up camp, that student must do some sort of “restore” to make up the work they missed. They are formally re-introduced to the group at the end of their step-back.

Separations: A student is separated from the group by an instructor if they are not meeting expectations and/or are being disruptive to the group. This is not a student choice. A lot of importance is put on the group, and being a member of the group – thus, a separation is a consequence, not a reward. Again, a student is formally re-introduced to the group, stating why they were separated, what they need from the group, and what their plan is to move forward. The group is then given the chance to say what they need from the separated student. Again -- assertive, assertive assertive.

Choice Theory: Ben basically described this to me when giving me behavior management techniques for substitute teaching last winter. When we went over this during NST, I said “hm, now that looks, familiar.” It is a very simple way of managing behaviors, and here it is:

What do you want?
What are you doing?
Is what you are doing getting you what you want?

Example:
I am tired and hungry and I want to go to bed.
I am whining and complaining instead of setting up camp.
Is this getting me any closer to going to bed?
No.
How can I change what I am doing to get what I want?
I can help set up camp so we can cook dinner faster, so that everyone can eat and go to bed.

Conveniently for instructors, the way a student can get what they want is generally to do what they are supposed to be doing.

We also use techniques called Reality Therapy and Motivational Interviewing. These are a bit more involved, and I know I will understand them more once I used them with students, so I’ll leave these for another day.

Contracts: Throughout course, students write contracts with instructors to further their goals for course, or to correct negative behavior. Contracts can be positive (to continue doing something such as showing positive leadership within the group), or negative (to find positive alternatives to negative behavior, such as using course tools to communicate assertively instead of yelling). In STEP courses, contracts are used to show the judge responsible for each student’s case that she/he is making progress. In non-adjudicated courses, contracts are simply a way to help students document their progress and give them SMART goals to work toward.

S-Specific
M-Measurable
A-Attainable
R-Realistic
T-Timely

…did I mention OB uses a unbelievable amount of acronyms? Don’t worry, there are more…

STEP, FINS, and Intercept

Many people have been asking me: “how can adolescents complete courses during the school year?” The answer is…

*STEP and FINS students receive a full semester’s coursework for one class for completing and OB course.
*Many students, especially those in STEP, have already dropped out of school for various reasons.
*Those FINS students that have not dropped out and choose to complete a course during the school year somehow get permission from their school/teachers to take time off for the course and then come back to school. I do not know exactly how this works, but I do know it is possible. Also, some courses are run during the summer months.
*Many Intercept courses are run for 18-20 year-olds, who have finished or dropped out of high school and are not in college. I don’t know what happens for 14-17 yr old Intercept courses.

Now the next question is: What are STEP, FINS and Intercept?

STEP stands for Short Term Expeditionary Program. This is a program run by the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice (FDJJ). Not all teens who are arrested and go through the FDJJ come to this program – only those who are arrested of non-violent crimes and sentenced to it by a judge. The program is 30 days longs, and the students must graduate the course or enter into the juvenile detention system. If they try to “run away” while on course, it is a felony and they go to jail. Students generally spend about 5 days on base, 7-8 days on the river, 3 days on solo, 7-8 more days on the river, and 5 more days on base, where they complete their final 7.6 mile run and graduate. All STEP courses are run from the Yulee, Florida base.

FINS stands for Families in Need of Services. This is another program run by the FDJJ, although it is a prevention program, targeted at teens who are at risk of becoming offenders for one reason or another – sometimes drugs, fighting, truancy, etc, etc. The major differences between FINS and STEP are: FINS youth are not adjudicated, they must apply to be in the program (or a parent must apply for them), and their course is 20 days long with 10 days of follow-up (instructors make scheduled home visits to work with the students and their families about transferring the learning that happened on course to their home environment.) The tuition is paid by the State of Florida.

Intercept: This is a nation-wide OB Outreach program that OB Discovery participates in. Most importantly, it is not an acronym! Like FINS, it is targeted at at-risk youth. Unlike FINS, it is not paid for by the State of Florida, so each student must pay their own tuition, which is usually about $6,000. As you can imagine, the demographics change pretty drastically from one type of course to the next. Intercept also has courses for youth ages 14-17 as well as for young adults ages 18-20. (FINS and STEP are all for youth ages 13-17.)

Next question: Where do you actually live?

At the moment I kind of live everywhere. This is a nice way of saying I am homeless with various places to stay. I am a “floater” like many OB employees. Each base has a number of cabins available for staff to stay in, as well as space for pitching tent. (I now own the best tent EVER – thanks dad and Connie for giving me the family Eureka!) I am re-imbursed for gas money when transporting myself from base to base, which is nice, and as an intern, I also get a bit of money for food. Honestly, what is this concept of earning money all about?

The OB Discovery Bases are:

*Five Rivers Base in Fairhope, AL (where we had NST) – STEP, FINS, and Intercept
*STEP Base in Yulee, FL - STEP only
*Scottsmoor, FL Base (where I am now!) – FINS and Intercept
*Key Largo, FL Base – FINS and Intercept (I have not been to this base yet – they do Everglades trips during the winter months)

I hope that helps clear up a bit of the mystery bubble as to what I've been doing lately. It really is a bit like a bubble - it is it's own little world, and it is difficult to explain one piece without explaining it all. A bit like Vanuatu - I feel as if I can talk about it all day, but the only way to truly understand it is to live in it. I can explain all of the pieces, but on top of all of those pieces are all the people, and the culture, and the little things that make it unique. But I will do my best, and I hope this has been a good start!

New Staff Training (NST) - Part II

Acronyms

In Outward Bound there are many acronyms. OB itself usually becomes an acronym. One of my favorite acronyms in DEBB, which stands for “Denial, Excused, Blame, and Bullshit.” It is a great way to call someone out when they are doing any of these four things instead of taking ownership for what they should be doing, but aren’t. “Have you ever heard the story of Debb? Well, let me tell you about her. She was always coming up with excuses for not getting things done – either she was blaming some of her co-workers, or making excuses because of circumstances, or denying that there was even a problem, or occasionally, feeding everyone a line of B.S. to get out of responsibility for something that looked bad…” From that point on, you can call someone out for “Debb-ing.” (No offense to the Debs, Debras, or Deborahs out there.) So, instead of making excuses for why I haven’t kept as up-to-date with pictures and stories as I would have liked with this blog, I will simply continue where I left off: with the second half of training.

Throughout training our group periodically switched between “student mode” and “adult mode.” We began much of our training as students – our trainers, Katie and Jinky, ran the “daily flow” much as if we were a group of teenagers at the beginning of a course. This was educational, if frustrating at times. I certainly learned what it feels like to be a student on a typical OB Discovery course – all of a sudden you find yourself in a place that is unfamiliar, under the control of elders that you largely do not know, with little personal space, time, or freedom. You are on Training.

Training, Main, and Final

Each course is divided into three main sections: Training, Main, and Final. During Training, students have very few personal and group freedoms. There is a lot to learn, and a lot to prove. To get to Main, students must demonstrate a range of both “hard” skills (such as knot tying and boat loading) and “soft” skills (such as acceptable behavior and assertive communication). Once on Main, students have more freedom, and more responsibilities. They might be able to decide what they would like to eat for dinner, but they must also demonstrate that they can set up camp and make their way through dinner as a group.

To keep things both challenging and fun, students must also pass a certain number of “Instructor Challenges” to progress to the next stage. At our second campsite during New Staff Training (NST – another one to add to the acronym list), our Instructor Challenge was to unload all of the canoes and set up camp in 45 minutes or less. In silence. At dusk. The shore was a steep muddy embankment, and canoes had to be left tied up in the water. We did it. Luckily, almost every activity in OB includes a debrief, and we needed it that night. It is interesting how struggle can show the rifts in a group that we might normally sweep beneath the radar – and how talking about that same struggle can take those rifts and turn them into strong points as people learn about each other, and about the interpersonal dynamics within the group. (Sidenote: to my understanding, this is the theory behind pretty much all we did at The Adventure Centre – create challenge and/or struggle, then talk about it.)

The last portion of any expedition is Final. In this stage of program, students are expected to “take over” their own course. While they must meet certain requirements (for example: they must run for X minutes, must properly set up camp, paddle to X campsite, etc), the structure of their days and moving from one task to the next is determined by them. Instructors do not leave, but “step back” and let students both struggle and succeed. If students do not meet expectations during any phase of course, however, they may always be “bumped back” to the previous phase.

Our transition to Final during NST came our last night on the river, and it was the most memorable part of the course…which I’m not ready to write about yet. Later.

As we moved from Training to Main to Final, we got a sense of who our instructors were, and the kind of people we had to work with on our team. I experienced the same feelings of frustration, helplessness, empowerment, encouragement, helpfulness, and self-confidence that I would imagine – or at least hope – a typical OB Discovery student would experience on course. I was working with amazing, dedicated people who shared many of my values. Over the course of ten days of close quarters in canoes and tents, I found that these amazing people had become my friends, my teachers, and my students.