!: North Carolina Outward Bound, Here I Come! Hiking at Its' Best - Teamwork at Its' Best!

Of all the education and courses that I have ever taken, both in real life and in online courses and correspondence courses, one of the most valuable packets of information that I have ever received came when I attended, participated in and stayed for the North Carolina Outward Bound wilderness survival course. No matter what happens to me for the rest of my natural life, I will always remember almost every single moment of that very cool, very creative, exceptionally joyful, and strenous trip.

Just for the record, the trip that I speak of is an actual course and the place that I applied for is an actual school. There is no better school around than Outward Bound when it comes to teaching teamwork, self-esteem, strength, faith, unity, loyalty and wilderness survival. Seems that every moment was a lesson learned, to the basic lessons of survival to some of the silliest leave no trace lessons where someone had to volunteer to drink tuna juice. Yikes! Have you ever had the water from a can of tuna? For me, that was unacceptable even though someone had to drink it. Someone else volunteered and actually seemed to enjoy it. After all, it was water that did not come from the puddle we just passed! Still, the thought of tuna-flavored water did not interest me in the least. Leave the juice to the others, I still played my part and did my share of teamwork. I was one of the two who actually had brought along the swiss survival knife, and one of the two who knew how to use it to open cans. (It is no easy feat for a beginner. But since I had been practicing and opening cans for a few weeks ahead of time, there was no tuna can left unopened while I was there with my trusty pocket knife).

So we learned lessons of teamwork, like let the slowest person lead the trail. Then no one is left behind and we all take a good pace through the forest. We learned over lessons that were not planned. Ahh, remembering the full-face huge spider web that attacked me just because I was not looking straight ahead as I passed through the trail. What would you do if you were walking along, pack on back, through the forest trail and all of a sudden out of nowhere your face was covered in iccky spider web --one huge web. Just take a second and wonder where is the spider for this humongous web? What would you do? If anyone asked me I probably would have said that this just won't happen to me because I am always on the look out. Well, guess again. It happened to me and I was not prepared for it. I reacted in a most unusual way. (No, not sharing that here).

We teamed up to hike through the rest of the woods, we stopped to rest and some of us stopped to put some moleskin in our boots. Another stopped for a mild asthma attack that went almost unnoticed. We all checked out the trail in front of us and then finally we came to this dead end--a huge mountain. (Okay , I called it a mountainm and they called it a rock). But to me, anything over seven or eight stories high is a MOUNTAIN!!! (Now that is coming from someone who had never been hiking before). We all took turns hiking up this rock --rock-scaling they called it. I still call it mountain-climbing. On-belay, on-belay!! At least we knew that meant that somewhere down there someone had us covered and if we did fall, someone would pull the reigns in on our safety gear and hopefully no one would break a hip or a head. Turns out we had a fabulous day and that was just one of the days we spent viewing the forest, eating, sleeping and making dinner, breakfast and lunch right there on the forest floor.

One lesson I learned or rather re-learned is that when you are worried or concerned about looking funny or wierd, you later will learn that you should have just been yourself and done what was most comfortable for YOU. Never worry about what anyone else thinks. When it comes to important things, heck, be YOURSELF! .. Here is my mini-lesson in that as I learned by living in the forest with eleven women and no tents for about seven days. Before packing on the trip, I had wanted to include my hiking stick for comfort in hiking, and I wanted to bring my frisbee --for my plate for food and my chopsticks. But, I left all of these home because I was meeting my fellow campers for the first time and I did not want to make a bad impression. After all who wants to be seen as silly when meeting friends for the first time?

So, left all the goodies at home. And then, POW! There is was like a ton of bricks. My instructor walks out of her tarp-tent one day with her frisbee and chopsticks in her hand. And the other instructor has her hiking sticks. Wow, talk about packing mistakes. It was right then that I wished I had just been myself and packed my own chopsticks, frisbee and hiking sticks. Usually , for me , throughout my life, that lesson sticks with me. Heck, just be me and let everyone else worry about themselves. Anyone ready to make fun of me or think that I am silly , well , they will just have to live with themselves while I am comfortably living with ME!

These are just a few, a microscopic few lessons learned that week. Overall the experience was one of the best in my life and I would love to go back to the forest with some Outward Bound Alumni. Anyone here reading from NCOBS or COBS? Write to me at my email box and lets share stories.