Suppose someone asked you if you wanted to spend a month in a scorpion-infested, completely unpredictable environment a place lacking plumbing and any connection to the surrounding world. This past March, I flew all the way from the Adirondack Mountains of New York State to the desert of Baja, Mexico to participate in a month long National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) course. The plan was to spend the four weeks sea kayaking along the coast of the Sea of Cortez, while being completely self-sufficient, with no access to the outside world. Midway through my junior year of high school, I had made the decision to graduate a semester early. I’m from a lovely small town, and I’ve done my fair share of traveling, but high school was getting old. A couple Google searches and one recommendation from my friend later, I had a solid plan. I would do a NOLS course in Mexico.
The first four days of my trip were awful. I couldn’t wait to fly back home and see the familiar faces of my friends, boyfriend and family. It got to the point where I began counting the days before I would finally fly off, until one morning I woke up to the sound of dolphins playing just off our beach. As far as I can tell, that was my turning point. I realized what a priceless opportunity I had in front of me, and “just sucking it up” was not enough. Beginning with that pod of dolphins, I had the best month of my life.
NOLS was transformational for me. I learned things, like how to eskimo roll a kayak, and how to self-rescue myself-redundant? in the middle of the ocean, but those aren’t lessons that I’ll use every day. I also learned how vividly rewarding hard work can be. I was taught the importance of taking advantage of every opportunity presented to me, and how important it is. As Nike’s tagline advises”Just do it.” The third set of lessons that I gained from my experience were much more subtle, most that I didn’t even realize at the time. Upon coming back, many people commented on how they noticed a difference in me, that I seemed more comfortable in my own skin.
When every decision you make is one of survival, life is fulfilling. When we strip our lives of the unnecessary drama and frivolities, we can experience a raw goodness unlike anything else. At one point my friend Zach referred to something back home, calling it the real world, and he was quickly corrected when someone pointed out that this, too, was the real world. The bare essentials are what really make up reality; we’ve just built so much around it that we’ve forgotten the truth.
