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NOLS in hindsight

Being left in the middle of nowhere with 36 half-strangers

image Photo credits to Carolina Mendez

This blog post has a "prologue" and "epilogue" because I wrote it in Epilogue Books Chocolate Brews on the world-famous Franklin Street.

Prologue

During the second week of August 2022, I was "left in the woods" with 36 people I had relationships with ranging from relatively close to haven't talked to beyond "hi what's your name". Our emotions were on a violent spectrum flip-flopping between excitement and anxiety - both in fear of "bonding" with so many people but also the "challenges" that were promised to advance our leadership. Circled on "the lawn," we took obligatory group pictures and set off to kickoff yet another new beginning. (Did I mention that are phones were taken away? Shocker.)

Team Deconstructing

Throughout the four days there, we experienced team-building activities that - I feel - strayed from its purpose. However, don't get me wrong, the outcome was better than its orchestrated mission. From cooking competitions to building the classic marshmallow tower, the exhaustion and absurdity of the whole situation brought out the rarest parts of people; the quirks; the laughs; the good-natured arguments; everything that we were afraid to bare around most. From pitches for our food contraptions with niche details that only we could even begin to understand to arguments about who won the tower competition, we deconstructed ourselves more than we built ourselves up.

The Hike

I'd been on numerous hikes before, but the Appalachian Trail was definitely one of the most challenging ones I'd been on. From walking on ledges, hopping over streams, pushing our way through thorny bushes, to steep descensions, it was far from easy. Luckily, my group had a brilliant motivator, whose chants echoed throughout the forest. An acapella version of Uptown Funk was even produced during the 6-hour ordeal. I'll be honest, it felt miserable in the process and I was sore the next day, but I'll classify it as fun!

Alone on the river

I've rafted in the rivers of North Carolina before, but never once had I done it alone in my own little boat. The safety video wasn't particularly reassuring, as my peers also asserted, but I did it anyways in the spirit of NOLS! Paddling through an obstacle course of rapids, rocks, a small waterfall, and ducking under trees was the highest my adrenaline levels had peaked in awhile. I'd have to say, though, that the hardest part was paddling against the current to stop on the shore for our pit stops.

UnSwiftie

On our last day, we had a dance party, something that I've only recently begun to regularly experience. To set things straight, I am NOT a "Swiftie" (someone who is an avid fan of Taylor Swift's music and likely the celebrity herself), but screaming "You Belong With Me" in a cabin-like room at night will filed as one of my defining experiences in life. It is also interesting to note that the WiFi mysteriously cut off right as that song ended, but who am I to judge? After being crouched in front of a air-conditioner "camp fire" for part of the night, the song was a great end to the trip.

Epilogue: In hindsight...

As we boarded the bus back to our hotel - sweaty, exhausted, (a little delirious?) - and back into reality, notifications from the past four days flooded into our phones with little warning. The barrage of emails did little to calm the anxiety of starting school, and I had little room to reflect on the past few days of my life. At one point during the trip, I told someone that we may think of the current situation as unbearably unforgiving, but in hindsight, everything will look like the best few days of our short lives. In hindsight, I was right. Whether it be a trick of my neurological systems (yes, I mean brain) or not, in hindsight, NOLS was just what I imagined: a time of deconstruction and a chance to isolate myself from reality.