I sat alone with only my thoughts and a small bark scorpion to accompany me. A wave of dark red canyon wall, layered with many monsoon seasons, arched overhead. A small spring bubbled out of the rock below creating a rhythm joined by the wind and marched to by bumble bees pollinating the few flowers courages enough to pop up in a place as desolate as this. It was the second of three days I would be completely alone in the middle of a canyon shooting off a channel near the middle of Lake Powell. I was no stranger to this solitude, for alone-time has always served as a kind of meditation for me. A time to reflect and become a better person though deep self analysis.
Ever since I was a young child the woods has served a a place where I could bask in the purity of natural, ethereal beauty. Whenever I was angry or sad or just could not name the emotion felt I would run to the open space by my house to sit and listen to the wisdom of the trees. From this I began to understand the meaning of life and how to live everyday like it was my last while working to be the best person I could be. Some of the most honest and free minded thinkers I have ever encountered I met through nature, and many of them serve as role models to me today. Whether I was gazing in to pool, surrounded by ripe blueberries, reflecting the true magnitude of Mount McKinley in Alaska, or spectating as Orcas breached nearly ten feet away from my kayak in the Puget Sound, nature has always come through as a way for me to connect with like minded thinkers, the people of the wilderness, the poets of the past and revolutionaries of the future. Once I began to understand the earth I started to understand myself.
I first began to incorporate this love of nature into my Open School curriculum through a trip to California to study John Muir. On this trip I traveled with a group of fourteen students through Yosemite, to learn, first hand why Muir fought so hard to save the Hetch Hetchy valley. Though this experience I began to understand how many life metaphors lie within the untouched wilderness. Exactly one year later I found myself canoeing through Lake Powell, which sadly suffered the same fate as Hetch Hetchy. This trip taught me how wilderness serves as a place of deep reflection, for I was the only sophomore out of a group made up of predominately graduating seniors. I was able to watch as a group of students reflected upon their childhood and connected through nature with their inner-beings to build up the strength to carry themselves, head high, out into the world. This pushed me to take as many of these amazing trips as possible and to challenge myself to gain new skills and perfect, through hands on experience, existing ones.
Then almost exactly a year after Powell, as I stood upon a mound of multi-colored earth covered in blueberry bushes a light breeze brushed back my hair and I gazed with my head tilted back at the true magnitude of Mount McKinley. At that very moment I understood what it means to exist, that I am really just a small part of a giant, beautiful world with an ever-changing number of opportunities waiting just around the corner. I took this realization with me into my junior and senior years with the goal to wake up every day and believe would be to be the best day of my life. This was a monumental step in my education, social life and overall happiness. I now feel ready to go out into the world and make a difference one class, social experience and walk in the woods at a time.
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