Charlotte – a junior at Urban High School

 My family isn’t really the outdoorsy type. My dad’s idea of camping involves full sized inflatable mattresses and battery operated heaters, and I’ve lived in San Francisco my entire life. Needless to say when I signed up to spend three weeks rafting and mountaineering they had their doubts.

From the moment we landed in Redmond I was confused. The airport was a single building with only one baggage claim and one gate, hugely contrasting to the chaos of SFO’s multiple terminals. This however, made it very easy to find the bus where we were supposed to meet. After a two-hour drive, the bus dropped us on the side of a dirt road: I felt like I was really in the middle of absolute nowhere.

Our instructors had us dump out all our gear right there and repack only the things on ‘the real packing list’. We handed in our cell phones; there was no calling your parents to back out now. We then learned that of the 5 t-shirts we had brought, only one would be coming on the 3-week trip. This simplistic mentality was applied to many other previously critical items, and in less than a day, my entire lifestyle was completely turned over. There was something about lacking things as fundamental as running water and trash cans that made me take a step back.

Charlotte’s crew at high altitude

While our lifestyle was simple, it was in no way relaxed. We were determined to not only achieve our goals but to do so with excellence. Things as easy as properly tying your shoes and putting on a backpack had to be broken down into step-by-step processes. It wasn’t that you couldn’t power through the blisters from poorly tied boots or wrestle on your backpack but that we took pride doing everything in the best way we knew. I remember spending over two hours cutting a block of cheese into thin, string-like slices to put in our burritos; that was what it meant to be an Outward Bound student.

When I returned home I didn’t start living in a tent or only eating overcooked rice and beans, those things no longer held the same appeal. And yet, something had changed. I held onto the core values that had allowed me to summit a 10,000 ft. tall mountain, raft over 100 miles, and create a highly functional team from complete strangers.

Outward Bound was about so much more than backpacking and rafting. It was about being outdoors– the real outdoors– not in manicured parks contained in city blocks. It was living simply and motivating ourselves with a list of ideals. It was about having fun in every moment: from long days of hiking in the rain to eating a sliver of a boxed cheesecake.

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