Outward Bound’s mission statement goes as follows: To change lives through challenge and discovery.  What exactly does this mean?  Well simply put we use challenge and discovery out in the field in an attempt to build confidence, character, and leadership that will carry over into the student’s day to day life.  In many cases, wilderness is used as a vehicle to create the challenge and discovery.  But is wilderness really necessary?  Can challenge not be created in an urban environment?  Can discovery not be cultivated in the city?  If both of these objectives can be created in the front country, then why wilderness?

So first things first, what is wilderness?  To me wilderness is the great unknown, it is the freedom to be engulfed in solitude, it is the ultimate collection of natural life, it is the one place where every living being has the opportunity not to do, but simply just to be.  To quote the great naturalist Edward Abbey, “Wilderness is not a luxury, but a necessity of the human spirit.”  Nature can mean many different things to many different people.  Some think of wild remote places in Alaska that are only accessible by foot, while others feel adventurous taking new route home from work.

The big question still remains, why wilderness?  Like I said earlier, challenge exists everywhere in life.  In fact, as an avid outdoorsman most of life, I find more challenge in navigating the urban sprawl than any outdoor area.  I feel far more challenged in the urban environment than the wilderness.
To me, the biggest advantage I find being away from powerlines and cell service is a clearer image of myself.  Solo is a tool often used on OB courses, and the act of soloing allows students the time to look deep inside themselves, and reflect on what they find and what they’ve accomplished.  I find that individually both being in nature and the activity of solo can help one to look deep inside themselves, but used in tandem they can inspire us to not only look deep inside ourselves, but to take what we find carry it with us outwardly.  The fact that you can look down at an alpine lake and see your reflection in the water is a beautiful metaphor for how wilderness can act as a mirror into one’s soul.

I find that I can make timeless connections while out in the woods.  My favorite tree in the Sierra Nevada range is the Sugar Pine. The older Sugar Pines in California can have a lifespan of 500 years.  The Bidwell-Bartleson Party were the first settlers to cross the Sierra Nevada range, only 175 years ago.

That Sugar Pine you crossed on your Minarets 14-day backpacking trip could have the same tree that John Bartleson and John Bidwell crossed while navigating the rugged mountain range in covered wagons.  The towering waterfalls that John Muir saw in the summer of 1869 while he wrote My First Summer in the Sierra are the same waterfalls that you and I see today.

Wilderness is truly the only outlet I have that can show me just how small I am in the grand scheme of things.  I’ve never felt as small as the first time I slept out and admired the stars or the first time I stood under a Sequoia. After seeing the enormity that the natural world has to offer, my city problems always begin to look like small change.
Imagine taking everything you have used in the last 14 days, and put it all in a backpack, and then carry it over a mountain pass.  How did it go?  Sounds impossible, but our instructors and our students do that every day.  They carry their entire lives on their back; this includes food and shelter and clothing. The sun becomes their clock and the stars their calendar.  I have found that my time in the wilderness is the time when I am most mindful.  That is one important side-effect of being out in Mother Nature: purposeful living.  So much of our time now is spent passing the minutes, rather than cherishing them.  To quote Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods, “Nature does not steal time, it amplifies it.”

So again I’ll ask, why wilderness? Wilderness allows us to see ourselves as we really are, wilderness allows us to see the vastness of the world in a new perspective and wilderness allows us to live simply and deliberately.

Get into the wilderness with Outward Bound California by enrolling in a course today!