By Ben Trister
Why Wilderness?
The unique challenges offered by the backcountry classroom can have a profound effect on peoples understanding of themselves and the world around them. The revelations one could make about interacting with leaders and peers, our place in the natural world, relationships with family members, and the list goes on and on. People go into the backcountry with three things; their belongings, each other, and the memories of their past experiences. People are confronted with isolation impossible to reach in the front country; their deepest emotions are revealed to them as they are immersed in a simpler yet profoundly more animalistic state.
Every human of sound mind is an actively learning organism interacting unstoppably with the world around them. Have you ever stopped and thought about just how many thoughts you think in the average day? How many days you’ve been alive and you will see an almost infinitesimal amount of thought history within your own personal universe. Immediately upon entering the challenging state of being on an expedition people are actively engaged with improving their situation whenever a chance arises. If you can teach people something that will immediately make their suffering diminish they will learn it with amazing speed. You will have their devote attention. During our last trip Chris Grosjean volunteered to take over the solo boat for a couple of miles. Before starting he asked me for any tips that would make the job easier. I told him if he aggressively leaned the boat to his onside and held the lean the entire time it would help the bat track that way so he wouldn’t have to emphasize his jay stroke as dramatically, ensuring faster travel. Without hesitation he put the boat on edge and learned by doing, occasionally saying what he was noticing working best to me. He powered through paddling and stayed comfortably with the pod. The advent of new challenges allows people to improvise new solutions to new problems they have never encountered before. During my LOD I was confronted with river navigational problems I have never encountered. I was confronted with the challenge of reading were the river was to shallow to paddle. As a consummate play boater I have never paddled under such low water situations very much on purpose. By being forces into this scenario by the forces of gravity I learned the hard way that if you don’t make the right moves to stay in the main current flow you go SCRAPE and get stuck. After about the second time I got stuck I had already memorized what these features looked like and worked hard to avoid them henceforth so I could maintain my position as lead boat.
The most important piece of equipment you bring with you on any trip is your brain. When in the backcountry people are cut off from the advantages of information technology and are forced to rely on their memories and fact retention capabilities. People’s cogs are always turning as they work to recall information. This attributes to what I think can be called a heightened state of awareness among everyone faced by these challenges. People have no time to let their guards down and their true fears and insecurities are revealed to themselves. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is made apparent in daily life. The challenge of addressing such basic needs of shelter and food, what Thoreau summed up in on word as warmth, takes priority over secondary educational objectives? Under adverse conditions you must prioritize personal survival needs. People revert into instinctive, primal-survival mode to maintain as strong a position as possible. On nice days margins for error are reduced and demanding tasks become impossibly easier with improved psyches group lessons not only become feasible, they are downright engaging and fun to participate in. There is nowhere else to be and nowhere else you’d rather be than learning and having fun with your group. On my solo I found myself reverting into a survival mode I have never seen within myself. Severe consequences for silly mistakes loomed as distinct and unwanted possibilities if I wasn’t totally careful at all times. Spending a long fall night alone and freezing is something I don’t want to deal with. Warmth was my primary motivation for living.
The challenges offered by the wilderness classroom are impossible to replicate in any contrived way. The lessons learned by dealing with real consequences are never forgotten and become like instinct. People will learn how they learn better than they ever have known before. Finally people overcome challenges that they have never before been able to test themselves against. All new knowledge will be invaluable for the rest of their lives.
Adventure Education
Plymouth State University
