8th grade goes outward bound

Last week thirty two EDS eighth graders and four faculty members went outward bound. Shortly after noon on Monday we left the parking lot at the Pisgah Center for Wildlife Education and walked into the Pisgah National Forest with everything we needed for the next five days on our backs (food, shelter, clothing, gear, etc.). Our instructors spent much of the first two days teaching the requisite skills so that by Wednesday, the students were largely self-reliant. Each participant was assigned an important and vital daily job. The students broke camp each day, cooked the meals, cleaned up according to “leave no trace” principles (http://www.lnt.org/programs/principles.php), navigated their way to our next site, and set up camp again.

Teaching wilderness skills was not the point of the trip, although they are good to learn. It was within the context of this unique – and occasionally uncomfortable – learning environment that many other lessons were experienced. We worked with North Carolina Outward Bound’s “four pillars” of physical fitness (the importance of taking care of the body God has given us through proper nutrition, exercise, and hygiene), craftsmanship (do things that matter and do them well), self-reliance (becoming less dependent on our “stuff,” being resourceful, and recognizing and applying personal strengths), and – perhaps most importantly – compassion (recognizing and valuing our differences and our interdependence so that we live productively in community with each other).

Even still, more lessons were packed into this experience: lessons of courage and tenacity, leadership, reflection and self-knowledge, environmental awareness, the value of quiet time alone free from the daily distractions with which we occupy ourselves, and the list goes on. Lest you get the wrong impression, be assured that along the way there was also a great deal of fun, laughter, and fellowship.

While I am pleased that the immediate response to the experience by the students and their parents has been overwhelmingly positive, I also recognize that the full value and impact of the trip will not come to fruition for years to come. We went into the woods and lived simply with each other for five days. In doing so, we experienced the essence of community in a distilled and undisguised way. We directly and intimately experienced the magnificence and mystery of God’s creation, thereby being in direct communion with Him. Only later will we each, individually and collectively, determine the value and usefulness of this experience for ourselves. Somewhere along the way, I hope there is an English teacher who will assign Thoreau to these students and that his words will ring true for them when they read:

“I went into the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach…I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life…[but] I left the woods for as a good a reason as I went there..I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours…If you have built your castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”

Now, put the foundations under them. Amen.