But Not Much

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there is some shit i will not eat.

-e. e. cummings


I know that I told many of you that I would try to write earlier this summer. I feel as though some of you may have interpreted that to mean that i would write. Unfortunately, between my two courses, I became intensely preoccupied with vegetables and television. Imagine that. Anyway, as can hopefully be ascertained from this very blog, I am in fact still alive. After two back-to-back courses and several immediate personal trips, I am 20 pounds lighter, have about as many new scars, I've spent all of my money on new gear that I could waste all of my time explaining why I needed it, have been professionally homeless for 3 months now, and will continue to be for several more in the future. Ahhhh... this is the life.

My first course was just that... my first course. I had two great co-instructors, Nacho and Anne, who helped me turn awkward feelings of being a novice into equally awkward but signifcantly more useful feelings of being not so novice that I can't do anything but also not so experienced that I can do most things. If that sounds confusing, it totally is. I picked up new phrases such as "bummer" and "shoot dang!" and taught many classes, some good and many others not so good. We had one student leave the course for personal reasons, and I was surprised at how long it took me to realize that it wasn't because I had done something dumb. At this point in my carreer (and yes, I have actually begun to think of this as my carreer for reasons that I will get to later), my learning curve was incredibly high. I was like a sponge, constantly absorbing everything I could, and frequently getting wet and stinky. Nacho and Anne were both very knowledgeable and encouraging. Nacho had been "in the game a long time" to quote him. He had been working for NOLS pretty regularly for 10 years and had done a lot of courses. Anne had actually taken her Instructor Course (IC) at the exact same time as me last year. She was on my sister course. Unlike me however, since that time she had been essentially working for NOLS full time, so she also had a lot of courses under her belt. There was one instance during this course where we saw some people on the other side of a lake. This in and of itself was interesting because we hadn't seen anybody whatsoever outside of our course for almost a week. Then we noticed the tell-tale knee-high gaiters and green windpants. We were looking at fellow NOLSies. We (Nacho, Anne, and myself) trekked over to them and found out that they were a bunch of kayaking instructors taking a course to become hiking instructors. We were going opposite directions so we exchanged beta about the areas that we each were headed. It then came up in conversation that Anne was going to be leading her next course right after finishing this one, and she knew that at least one of her two co-instructors had never worked a course before. At this, the instructors from the other course balked, saying "Oh crap man, that sucks! First-time instructors aren't good for anything but hanging around the kitchen and cooking meals. I'm really sorry, that's really unfair to you." As he went on and on, Nacho kept looking at me trying not to laugh, and Anne was turning beet red. It was a challenge to me as well to not burst into hysterics at the awkwardness of it all. Afterwards, as the three of us were walking back, Anne told me something along the lines of how it just popped out of her mouth that she was bummed about having first time I's and if anything it meant that she didn't think of me as one. That was all Nacho and I needed to relieve ourselves of the laughter that had been building up inside for a while, made all the more funny by Anne's increasing discomfort. Good times. Anyway, that was a very good course with very good students and a very good I-team. I learned a lot, and felt much more prepared for my second contract.

I had one day off between contracts. During that one day off, I essentially just ate vegetables and watched TV, but I'd be lying if I said that there wasn't a pretty substantial amount of beer drinking to go along with it. For this course, I was contracted as a Patrol Leader, with is technically second in command out of the three instructors. Really though, I just got paid a bit more to do everything that I learned to do during my first course. I came into this course in far better shape, much more knowledgeable, and way more experienced than I was for my first course. I was ready to go. My Course Leader (first in command) was a 52 year old former Lutheran minister named Jeff. He had a long grey ponytail and in just about every way he looked like a slightly older version of Penn Jillette. His personality was completely different however, as probably better suited his former profession. Alex rounded out our trio as the third instructor. This was her first course, having just taken her IC earlier this summer. She was several years older than me and had a background not only in the outdoors but also in teaching. In other words, she did fine. The feeling of the course was much different this time around for me, and my learning curve continued to be very high. I felt as if the course flew by, and before I knew it we were heading down the hill of Scab Creek to our pick-up point. This was the same point at which I was picked up with Nacho and Anne, and it was very interesting to me to feel the differences in my body especially between the two experiences. I felt great. This course took me on a zig-zag route to that of my IC, and it was also very neat to see many of the places that I distinctly remember from that trip and how different they look when they're not under 4 feet of snow. This was also a very physically and emotionally challenging course for me. Physically because the route itself was difficult, going from north to south along the Continental Divide and being off-trail 90%!o(MISSING)f the time. Emotionally because of several physical problems that arose with some of the students, massive homesickness on their part as well that we needed to deal with, my own beginnings of a willingness to come out of the woods, and the death of a family member of one of my students. It was tough but we all came out of the woods together, alive, and better for it. It was a good thing.

I came back out of the field to several exciting things. My girlfriend Ash and my brother Dan were both in Lander, ready for a week of backpacking and climbing in the Winds. I've found that there is a distinct difference between work and personal trips, even when the two involve the same activities. It is a big, indescribable difference, but it is there and it is important. It was so good to see the two of them. The first order of business was to try to find my camera. I had lost it in the mountains on day 3 of my second course, and even though I had a pretty good idea of where it might be, we unfortunately couldn't find it. Then we spent a couple days climbing at Fremont Canyon, which is where I did most of the climbing section of my IC. It was great, not only did we do some great climbs, but we did climbs that I had exactly done more than a year before during my IC. Good stuff. I hadn't realized how much I missed those two people, and to show them these places that I had been working in was truly wonderful. After 6 amazing days, I took Dan back to the airport to head back to Louisville, and Ash and I started re-packing my truck. We were heading up to Seatle and then to Vancouver for a trip with her parents and brother. That is where I am now, on Vancouver Island. We just finished a several day backpacking trip in a beautiful sub-tropical rainforest and are tonight spending the night in a hotel getting ready for some sea kayaking over the next week. It's fun stuff for sure. A couple more things of interest, during the course of the summer, I had to do weekly reports and write papers and all sorts of stuff for an internship requirement for college. I finished it about a week ago, and I just recieved word that I did in fact graduate from college today. So that's good. Also, when I came back from my last contract I was offered another one... in Baja. 😊 So I will be down there from the beginning of September until the end of October. As for between now and then, after her family flies back to D.C., Ash and I will work our way down the west coast so that I can drink beer and learn Spanish and she can have massive job interviews in Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, etc. I'll ultimately end up with my cousin and his wife (cousin-in-law?) in San Diego so that they can take me to Tijuana so I can go to work. It's a tough life, but somebody has to do it. This is Soarpheat, signing out.

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Comments

[Mom]

A love the detail
So glad to read of your adventures. I love all the detail. I miss you bunches. Be save. Love Mom

[Norbert]

hiya!
CHRISM! You're so woodsy and manly and stuff. Sounds like you're having a ball, Chris, and I'm so very happy for you!!! Baja, huh? That's pretty rough. lol. Take the best of care, say hello to Ash for me, and I still remember the How Tos of using Underwear. Amen.