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| Cato teaching the important principle of how to minimize campfire impacts |
Last week I had this conversation with more than a few
people:
Me: “I’m spending
this weekend leading a Leave No Trace Trainer course with high school students.
Two of the students are serving as my co-instructors”
Doubter: “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
Me: “Not a doubt in
my mind. These kids are on it.”
The Leave No Trace (LNT) framework promotes training,
educating and inspiring others, and one way this is accomplished is through
encouraging Trainer educators to continue to lead. (What is a ‘Trainer’?
Someone who has completed a
16-hour Trainer course). Last May I co-instructed a Leave No Trace Trainer
course with a group of students from Phillips Academy Andover’s
OutdoorPursuits (OP) program, and this past November weekend, two of the students I
led in May served as my co-instructors.
This partnership and unique educational set-up is partly due
to myself. As an alumni of Phillips Academy, as well as of OP, I wanted to give
back to the experience and program that had given me so much confidence and
validation. A discussion with Mark Cutler, the current director, led to the
inclusion of the LNT Trainer course into their ‘Sense of Place’ course, which
is wild blend of experiential learning, OP principles, and history and
philosophy.
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| Rebecca, one of the student co-instructors, facilitating a discussion on teaching styles | | | | | | | | | | | |
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Outdoor Pursuits (OP), formerly known as Search and Rescue,
turns 50 years old this year and is also famous for being founded by Josh
Miner, the same outdoorsman who went on to found Hurricane Island Outward
Bound. OP includes many of the expeditionary learning principles of Outward
Bound (and the National Outdoor Leadership School), and has that similar mix of
team building, self-driven learning, and the opportunity and space for personal
reflection.
When I was an Andover student, (and it wasn’t all that long
ago, a mere 15 years), the technological world was much different. There was no
email. There was no texting. I had no cell phone, and my computer, a first
generation laptop, was the size and weight of the concise Oxford dictionary.
Cameras used film and videotapes. For all these reasons, the OP experience has
become all the more precious. The need for time away from technology has been
fairly well discussed across the landscape, but I invoke it now because it was
so apparent to me when I led these students, students who were not so different
from me, but yet so different in so many other ways.
In leading the Trainer course this weekend, the one of the
opening actions are discussing group agreements. How do we want to interact?
How do we want to experience the course? What is it that we can do to make this
a better weekend for all? One that stuck out was ‘Leave PA behind.’
We spent the next two days wandering through the ethics of
Leave No Trace. We discussed simple scenarios and complex personal ethics. We
wrestled with impacts in the backcountry, and what it felt like to still see
those impacts on their campus. The students, as to be expected, were
articulate, engaged, and curious. And, of course, still teenagers, the kind
that threw snowballs and acted a little silly during games of UNO.
The closing circle, after each student had given their
presentations on the seven LNT principles, was one of deep reflection. Students
applied their learning and experiences to their lives moving forward. Some of
it applies to functional things like trip planning and backcountry travel, but
some applies to the nuances of interpersonal communication and education.
Rebecca and Owen, my two co-instructors, shone early on in
the course as they led parts of the classroom portion. They continued to shine
throughout as they modeled excellent feedback, supported participants, and were
willing to be vulnerable and share their own challenges and ‘teachable moments.' I myself valued my time with the students, as they were inspiring, creative, and totally engaged with the ethics of Leave No Trace.
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| The girls in the group, ready to head home from Zealand. |
On a more personal note, throughout my career in natural
resources, in my stewardship of wild places, I have become thankful for the
seed of validation that came from Search and Rescue (S and R)/ OP and my time
at Phillips Academy. What I learned was confidence, in my choices and in my
being, and the importance of time spent in wild places to cultivating self and
spirit. What I strive to give back, as I lead current OP students, is that same
unexpected validation that it’s ok to follow a different path, to give them the
tools that create the ‘I’.
It is pretty straightforward (and very difficult to resist)
to draw a line connecting my S and R experience to my gravitational pull to
work in the woods and live in a rural area, to directly connect the Sanctuary
to the White Mountains, to connect my first weekend backpack to Moosilaukee to
the months I lives in the backcountry. The problem is that doing so suggests a
simple narrative, easily translatable but, also, highly simplified. Doing so
fails to acknowledge the myriad of pulls and decisions and disruptions that
have affected my life’s course. The role that S and R had in that narrative
thread is that it was one part of a long series of experiences that continue to
inform my life and work.
But, had it not been there, my life would be lessened.