This past year has been a tumultuous one for me. In my struggle to get down to the heart of who I am, I have sought to become more independent. This show of independence most recently manifested itself in the form of a four day trip to the Appalachians where I enrolled myself in an Outward Bound course. I am not sure what I expected from the experience, but I will tell you one thing, it far exceeded any expectations I could have dreamed up. It was, simply put, the most terrifying, physically and mentally challenging experience I have had to-date.
I signed up for the course without much forethought about what lay in store for me. I have always wanted to go on an Outward Bound and since I didn’t do much camping when I was young, I routinely jump at the chance to spend a long, sleepless night huddled in my sleeping bag on the cold, hard ground. In short, I am a jolly masochist.
The climax of the trip was the much feared ‘solo’. Solo time is integrated into every Outward Bound course and can range from just a few hours on a very short course, to 4 whole days on a long course. The ‘solo’ is typically a time for self reflection, self examination and an opportunity to prove you are savvy enough not to get eaten by bears while unsupervised. My solo lasted one very long night.
Each Outward Bound participant was given a solitary spot in the woods and a bag of standard necessities: tarp, some string, a bagel and cheese, a journal, a whistle and a compass. When I finally arrived at my spot, I took out my tarp and string and constructed a seemingly sturdy and well crafted sleeping structure. I, then, immediately set up my sleeping bag and lay down under my tarp. I was feeling pretty good about myself – after all, I got my shit together. I had not only hiked 14 hours, 6 of which was in total darkness along steep ravines, but I also rock climbed (never mind that there was a brief crying incident on the rock, which was, I swear, out of frustration, not fear. OK, maybe there was a little bit of fear). I could tie knots — three different kinds! I could also read maps, chart a course with a compass and survive the social angst of getting to know 11 strangers while tramping through the middle of nowhere. I had no doubt that if any pansy ass, Curious George of a bear decided to so much as sniff my bagel and cheese, I would give him a brisk slap on the snout and show him who was boss. My bravado was unfortunately fleeting.
It’s funny how darkness changes everything. You lay on your mat with your sleeping bag pulled up around your eyeballs and strain to identify strange noises in the distance. Trees that sheltered you in daylight suddenly rearrange themselves to become werewolves and ill-tempered mountain men.
For a while I lay inside my tent with my head lamp writing bad, teenage poetry and listening to the deafening (and I do mean, deafening) rhythm of the North Carolina crickets and cicadas. Finally, I decided I was too scared to stay awake — besides, the two previous nights spent counting the cacophony of snores from a neighboring tarp left me primed for a good nights sleep. I was confident that all I had to do was close my eyes and it would be morning in no time.
Unfortunately, a short time after falling into a restless sleep, I jolted awake and made the quintessential mistake of turning on my headlamp to scan the darkness for potential threats. Just as I was about to switch off myheadlamp and go back to sleep, I saw it — the largest green cricket I had ever seen (3+ inches!) lounging right next to where my head had just been!
I am not really scared of bugs, but I am also not psyched about the idea of a big green cricket crawling on my person while I am in REM cycles. Clearly, there was only one thing to be done — remove “Big Green” from what was clearly, MY tarp.
My method was simple: I got a stick, ‘encouraged’ Big Green to attach himself and then I threw the stick as far as I possibly could into the darkness. As I scanned the distance with my headlamp, I saw the most amazing thing – Big Green, in all his disgusting glory hopping back towards my little tarp as if on a mission. So, I repeated the process and lo and behold, he came back again. And again. That little twerp came back no less than 7 or 8 times. I was starting to feel like a subject on Funniest Home Videos (maybe this was a remote control cricket? were my crew mates laughing hysterically somewhere behind the trees?) or an unsuspecting and helpless woman in a horror flick (psycho killer cricket?).
At this point, I did what any other self-respecting, not-so-experienced camper would do: I took everything out of my pack and I constructed what I later referred to as “the cricket barrier”. The cricket barrier was an ingeniously constructed wall of shoes, clothes, hiking boots, rain gear and other various sundry. When I was finally satisfied that Big Green had been deterred from his evil plot devour my soul or at least to share my tarp on a cold, lonely night in the wilderness, I lay down once again.
Ten minutes later, while I lay counting sheep, trying desperately to fall asleep, I heard it — the first pitter patter of rain drops. A minute later, what was the gentle patter of rain became a torrential downpour with high winds blowing the rain into one side of my tarp. As I contemplated my sorry state of affairs: wet sleeping bag, wet clothes, wet gear (because my cricket barrier was sending rivulets of rain into my tent) I thought briefly about blowing my whistle.
Each crew member was given a whistle to blow in case of “extreme emergency”. As I sat up in my tarp, soaking wet, cold, and more terrified than I would like admit, I wondered about the true definition of “emergency”. Surely, I reasoned, things could not get much worse than they already were. As the first flash of lightening colored the sky a pale blue, I knew instantly that it was going to be a long, long night.
On the very first day of the course, our instructors gave us a lecture on what to do during a lightening storm, an event I considered improbable at the time. They demontrated the correct way to sit in which you make a circuit with your arms and legs in order to protect your heart in case lightening were to pass through your body. At 3 a.m., on the night of my solo, I was sitting up in my tent, soaking wet, cold, making a circuit with my arms and legs and almost hoping that lightening would strike me. I can honestly say that I was never happier to see the sun rise as I was on that morning.
When I returned to work the following Monday many people asked me if I had ‘fun’ on my vacation. Fun is definitely not a word I would use to describe my trip, but it was certainly an experience that I am glad that I had. I surprised myself, both in how strong I am and how weak. I was shocked that I hiked for 14 hours without complaining about my feet or my back or my ill-fitting, much heavier than the requisite 50 lb pack. I expected to enjoy rock climbing and was surprised to find myself frozen in fear, clinging to the side of the rock. I would say I certainly emerged form the esperience with a sensitivity towards crickets that I never knew existed before.
The most meaningful part of the trip, however, was the conversations I had with the strangers that were to make up my crew for 4 days. Out there, in the woods, far away from our wives, husbands, girlfriends, jobs and friends we told each other things that we might never have talked about in our daily lives. I suppose there is nothing like 4 days in the woods to lend a little perspective and a whole lot of camaraderie.
I loved hearing about the experince.