Personal Narrative: Outward Bound Wilderness Life

There are many things in everyday life that can be taken for granted. As a young teen just barely over the age of 13 I had yet to gain an understanding of the hard work that life is, and what it really takes to survive in this world. It wasn’t until I took a three week long Outward Bound wilderness survival course when I gained essential life skills that would help me through the challenges that life would place in front of me. This trip played a significant role during my upbringing by teaching me to take responsibility for failure, getting out of my comfort zone by working with new people on common goals, and helped me gain a deeper appreciation for my hardworking folks.

It wasn’t

until I suffered through a night of freezing temperatures and heavy rain without fire that I learned the importance of accepting my own failures and learning from them. Outward Bound courses traditionally require their students to embark on a solo overnighter in which they must survive on their own using what little essentials they have along with what nature has to provide.

Although this is a time for the acquired survival skills to be tested in the field, spending the night alone gives the students the opportunity to reflect on their journey thus far and think about what lies ahead. When the night arrived for me to venture out on my own, my attitude showed nothing but confidence. My parents had raised me on camping and backpacking trips which gave me a unique advantage over some of the “at risk” teens who were sent on the course as punishment. Surviving the night with just a sleeping bag and pad, small pot, flint stick, and a fixed blade knife seemed fairly simple for anyone who's spent any time in the outdoors. Sometime around three o’clock in the afternoon the course leaders sent our group out in different directions for the night. It was just becoming sunset by the time I had discovered my camping spot for the night; a small flat hidden just under some tall trees overlooking Ross lake in which we were traveling north by in canoes. As the mosquitos came out and began to bite up my neck and arms, heavy rain clouds overtook the sky and it was clear that night was

going to be a wet one. My slow travels whilst finding a camping spot had consumed most of the sunlight and had left me about to face the night without any campfire. As I scurried the surrounding area for acceptable firewood, small drops of rain began to trickle from the sky and it became obvious to me that I had failed one of the essential parts of survival, creating a fire. An overwhelming sense of fear took over me as it became vivid that a cold and rainy night was amongst me. As I spent the night huddled up in my sleeping bag against a tree for coverage, I became angry at the world for raining on me, tonight of all nights. The night progressed while the temperature dropped, tensing my muscles and chilling me to the core of my body. Sarcastically, I asked myself who could have done this to me, but then it struck me that this suffering was a result of my own inability to create fire. As I drifted to sleep, my mind accepted the fact that out here alone in the forrest there was nobody to blame but myself for my misery. The next morning I awoke to clear skies and rising temperatures, and my body was feeling quite well despite a night of torture. I felt this sense of clarity from accepting my failure, something I had yet to learn to do at this young age. Although I wish to never live through a night like that again, I am grateful for the experience it gave me. It is human nature to take what we have learned from our mistakes and use that knowledge to enhance our skills. That night taught me to take advantage of the lessons taught by my failure and use those experiences as a frame for success at school and in everyday life.
Rowing a canoe through the thunder and rain with an unfamiliar person taught me how to work with new people on common goals. We had just made it back to the canoes from a long day hike to the top of one of the nearby peaks when the rain slowly began to come down on us. This became worrisome, as we had about 2 miles of
canoeing to do in order to reach our camp site for the night. By the time we were loaded in the canoes, the rain was fully coming down on us. As we began the paddle north, my face was being pelted by rain from every direction. Through the mist being secreted from the lake we could see the peninsula where we would be setting up camp for the night. Staring straight at my destination while feeling tortured by the harsh weather I looked back back at my canoe partner, Richard, and told him that if we really put out our all we could make it to camp within just an hour or so. Although Richard and I had yet to create much of a bond on the trip, we both knew that as time went on the current conditions would only get worse. We quickly devised a plan to row with our fullest effort for ten minutes and then continue with more moderate rowing for five before returning to heavy paddling. This system quickly put us ahead of the other eight or so canoe duos. Even without any means of telling time, Richard and I managed to make it through the torrential downpour to camp in what felt like an eternity, but must have only been shortly under an hour. There was a real bonding moment between Richard and I as we tied up our canoe. We exchanged high-fives as our faces were dripping with a mixture of sweat and rainwater. For the remainder of the trip Richard and I continued to row together, thus creating a new friendship between us. However, the real lesson from this experience was how I learned to get out of my comfort zone and work with new people, a skill that has helped be successful through school, excel beyond expectations at the work place, and thrive in every other area of life.
Attending this Outward Bound course integrated me with people of many different backgrounds and social statues which helped me understand just how good my life was back home in Marin.

Growing up in Marin I had very few worries; each night my mom would prepare a warm meal and I always had a safe place to sleep at night. After 13 years of living this way such luxuries became so normal to me that I was under the impression that everybody lived this way. Along with me on this trip was a boy named Noe, a well groomed caucasian kid who seemed to be not much older than I was. From what knowledge I had of my life back home I assumed that the structure of his life would be very similar to mine; growing up with a loving family and nothing more to worry about than how quickly he could get his homework done before going out with friends after school. I remained under this impression for the first week of the trip and it wasn’t until one night around the campfire as a group that I learned the truth about Noe. Since the beginning of the trip the rest of the students and I had become a tightly knit group of people who worked well together and had gained one another trust. While sitting around the fire the topic of our lives back home started being discussed and it wasn't long before Noe jumped in the conversation. As a group we learned that Noe had spent his childhood living foster home to foster home and had no existing relatives other than an Aunt suffering from Alzheimer’s.

Hearing his story made me feel of both empathy for Noe’s upbringing and guilt for taking my life back home for granted. I began to think of all the things that were expectations for me, but merely dreams for Noe. Waking up to presents on Christmas, a birthday cake each year, and caring parents to say they love me each night before I doze off to sleep. Meeting Noe on this trip and comparing his life to mine helped me realized how fortunate I am to have such hardworking parents who want nothing more for me than to live the best life possible.
In Julian Baggini’s TED Talk: “Is there a real you?” Baggini claims that, “It's the shift between thinking of yourself as a thing which has all the experiences of life, and thinking of yourself as simply that collection of all experiences in life. You are the sum of your parts”. Although there is no factual evidence as to what makes us individual, I strongly agree with Baggini in that we are who we are from our experiences through life. I firmly believe that my time spend on this Outward Bound is one of the more significant factors as to who I am. It is impossible to know what my life would have been had I never taken this opportunity and gone on this trip. However, what I do know is that the two weeks I spent on this trip working with new people and exploring my own limits played a major role at molding the person that I am today. In correspondence with Baggini’s idea that our experiences mold us as the people we are, I feel that my experience at Outward Bound has had the most significant impact on who I am as a person today. Being placed in a new environment with a group of strangers while trying to survive the harsh elements of nature created a unique space for my character to grow, and my life to be changed forever.