For a while after I decided to quit working in New Mexico I struggled with what I was going to do next. I pondered this while in the high mountains of Colorado for my friends’ Nagel and Julie’s wedding in Steamboat Springs. Traveling and spending time alone reminded me of what I enjoy and I began thinking about other things that I enjoy. I put myself in a paradox of places, because I love the openness and simpleness of the wild places, yet to study Aikido I must live in a town large enough to support a dojo. I relish in the convenience of technology and the city life, but blanch at the culture’s blindness or disregard to the costs of such things and understand the simple way of life without these things. I am pulled ... read more

While I was home in Phoenix in November/December I thought I'd be staying there until April or so, but Seaver called me to come back to work in New Mexico. There was opportunity for advancement in this small company and I would be the most experienced instructor. The schedule would be different now…instead of 16 days on and 12 days off we were going to 8 days on and 6 days off so there would be more continuity in instructors. On top of that there were only going to be 4 instructors, and the partner you got was the one you kept. At first I was pretty skeptical about the schedule, but after doing it for almost 4 months now…I think it's better for the kids and the program. With only 6 days off my travel ... read more

After doing the seminar for Wilderness Odyssey in May I had been seriously considering working there. I was excited because there were other activities other than just hiking and the students were a lot closer to my socio-economic background than the kids in Idaho. The part that had me worried was that the kids at Wilderness Odyssey were mostly going to be adjudicated, which means they're in the court system. To add to my fears I had heard that the first group that came through Wilderness Odyssey had hit the new instructors pretty hard. I was experienced by then, but word from another experienced instructor that worked the first group was that it was a "shit-storm" To top it off my last trip at SUWS was going to be a week, then over two days off ... read more

The end of June through July was mostly spent working. I worked a three week trip, had one week off, then worked a two week trip. First I worked a week of Ridgewalking, then I worked a boys group for a week that was already on the "West Side", which was great. We went to some waterfalls and got to swim a bit. There's usually no water deeper than your ankles in Idaho so that was fun. We had a couple of grueling hikes where more than one student was cursing my existence. After that I worked "O" camp, where the student come for orientation when they first get to Idaho. We had one student who couldn't hike due to medical concerns. He had a really high heart rate and we had to check it several ... read more

I flew home in February to attend the Winter Count primitive skills conference in Maricopa, Arizona. I had an amazing time, sleeping in my tent in a warm Arizona winter, 65 degrees is heaven compared to the average at work of 20 degrees during the day. I had a few co-workers to keep me company at Winter Count, but I wouldn't have been lonely had they not been there. Everyone at Winter Count was very friendly. Friendly and usually a bit eccentric in one way or another. There are people like me, Wilderness Instructors, from various programs around the West. Anthropologists who are interested in how ancient man hunted, ate, slept, made/used tools, etc. The doom and gloom crowd who thinks moderns civilization is going to end and know they want to be able to survive. ... read more