There is a world of difference
between hearing about something, reading something, watching something,
rehearsing something and physically getting out there doing something where
everything you have heard, read, watched and rehearsed must be reliably put into practice.
Advance preparation is always a
critical ingredient for any endeavor worth adventuring into. This is especially
true when it comes to walking off into wild natural places where the
conveniences, comforts, and controls of home
are left behind.
Our trip this past weekend, one
involving a slightly challenging hike in, was an opportunity for the guys to
put into practice the hearing, reading, watching and rehearsing they have been
doing over the course of these past months of classes and exercises. It was
much more than that though. It was an immersion … a baptism of sorts … into an
environment that was completely different from any they were familiar with … one that moved not
according to our dictates but rather according to its own design where our
abilities to manipulate conditions are totally ineffective.
I did not measure the distance on
the map. It was, I am guessing, between two and three miles from where we
parked to where we set camp. I had no set schedule. No set teaching program in
my pocket. The lack thereof was not neglect or oversight on my part. It was
intentional.
I was not interested in putting
together a highly regimented weekend for the group that kept them jumping
through hoops to satisfy my own leadership expectations and stroke my ego. I
was more interested in this long weekend being a major disruption of their
normal regimented life-routine, something that would be replete with its own
lessons.
We were not in a hurry. Well, we
did kind of hurry to get under our shelters when that rain came through
Saturday afternoon. The rain did not last long. Just long enough to get things
nice and wet to add a touch of challenge to things. But that is one aspect of
being out there where we do not have a control panel. The only real time factor
that I paid any mind to was making sure the supper cooking was done and water
containers were full of processed water before dark.
Despite the lack of a syllabus or
regimentation there were numerous opportunities for impromptu sessions and
critiques. There was time for the guys to hike the mile to the pond and fish.
There was time for me to slip off to squirrel hunt and explore. It is a good
thing we carried rations with us.
Sure. There is a need for
guidance and structured teaching. The established basics are fairly well set in
stone. I think though that Montessori was onto something important and that,
where learning these skills and developing proficiency and confidence in
wilderness settings is concerned, more of the Montessori System that develops
personal initiative is appropriate not only for children but also for adults. Not
only where woodcraft skills are
concerned but for all of life.
There is a lot that can be
taught. There is a lot though that has to be caught through personal experience and those aha moments that arise on their own
through personal experience where personal experience becomes the greatest and
most gifted teacher. It is not what is taught and parroted back that is the best measure of
growth and development. No. It is what is caught that truly grows and matures a
person … whether they are ten or fifty years old.
It was, and is, my hope that some
catching took place over the course of the long weekend. I did a little
catching myself. I also had the opportunity to do a lot of observation and make
some mental notes where this group is concerned … mental notes about some
things that I am familiar with and take in stride as givens in wilderness settings that the unbaptized are not familiar
with.
One of these has to do with the
way our senses, especially our sense of hearing, seem to suddenly come alive
when we bed down out there on the ground deep in the woods far away from our
familiar security blankets. We hear every
sound and the sounds we hear are not the sounds we tune out at home because of
our familiarity with them.
Those physical senses … sight,
smell, touch, taste, hearing … are ours for significant reasons. We are not, at
least on this continent, far from the top of the food chain. Our
hunter/gatherer ancestors in a more primitive world depended on their senses
much more keenly than we do in the modern world we live in. When we take
ourselves out of the modern world picture and place ourselves in a more
primitive environment those senses instinctively begin kicking in.
The guys did good. They did
really good and I am proud of them. I have to admit though that they had a worn
and weary look when they crawled out of their shelters Monday morning. It had
been an adventure but they were about adventured out and ready to pack it in.
There was a side of me that did
not want to roll up. I took my time, swallowed a 600 calorie breakfast of
cereal/fruit bars for a blast of energy, finished that second canteen cup of instant coffee, loaded
my pack, and hiked out with them. Had I stayed behind it would have been a long
walk home.
No comments:
Post a Comment