Surviving Outward Bound

I am crouching on my backpack on the mountaintop waiting to be struck by lightning, trying not to imagine how it will feel to be electrocuted. Stretched out far below me is the supposedly beautiful panorama of Montana. I say “supposedly” because it’s hard to see anything through the chunks of ice dropping on me.

It began last summer. I got tired of all my female relatives talking about their luxury cruises, so I signed up for a cruise of my own – a five day white water journey down the Grand Canyon. I wanted to be able to one-up my relatives when they started chattering away about all their so-called wonderful trips.

The expedition was great fun – except Molly (my mule) and I descended at a ninety-degree angle into the canyon - all the time with me clutching her ears so that, if she stumbled, we would plunge together to the river below. The temperature was a steady 120º from dawn to dusk, and our nightly campgrounds were covered with numerous varieties of cacti. I became most familiar with the Hedgehog variety because, late at night after drinking a few glasses of wine to show my camaraderie with my fellow rafters, I always seemed to step on a piece of it while stumbling into my sleeping bag.

However, the trip was worth it because, from then on when my relatives pulled out their pictures of big boats, midnight buffets, and stuffy cabins, I could show shots of me in wide open spaces screaming as my fellow rafters pulled cactus needles from my feet, of me with beet-red skin, and of me yelping for help after a size six rapid catapulted me into the freezing water. After seeing my pictures, my relatives were speechless; thus I knew they were envious.

A year later, my mind having expunged the “uncomfortable” portions of my cruise and remembering only the fun of having raft leaders who cooked for us, offered us choices of iced beer or lemonade, set up tented toilets and handed out rolls of toilet paper as we took turns walking to our private facility, I determined that, since I was now an experienced camper, I was ready to climb the Himalayas.

To prepare for this Tibetan adventure, I decided I needed a practice run. After much deliberation, I signed up for a nine-day Outward Bound Mountain Survival course. I bought hiking boots and prepared for the course by walking around the block every day for three weeks. I didn't feel any further exertion would be necessary since I had signed up for the “Older Women’s Course”.

The Big Day arrived. I flew to Billings, Montana where I was met by a thin, bearded man named Lou who herded me and my suitcase into a waiting van filled with nine teen-aged boys.

“Where do I join my group of ‘Older Women’?” I asked Lou as we sped away from the airport.

“No other women signed up,” Lou replied, “so we put you with this group.

Two and a half hours from town, the van stopped at the bottom of a mountain. My first foreboding came when Lou handed each of us a backpack, a sleeping bag, and a metal bowl to eat and drink from. The backpack was so heavy that even Molly would have balked at carrying it. We unpacked our suitcases, filled the backpacks, and watched the van as it sped away with the rest of our possessions.

Lou told us that, in addition to our personal things, we also had to carry equal shares of the cooking utensils, food, and tent stuff. Then Lou helped me put on my pack.

“I gave you a lighter load,” he said, “since you’re an older woman. Your bag only weighs eighty pounds.”

I staggered to a nearby tree and clutched it for support. I couldn’t move. This was clearly a mistake. The Billings airport shop had racks of magazines displaying joyous backpackers wearing smiles of joy as they cavorted up steep slopes. Those magazines lied. No climbers in their right minds would smile while trudging up a mountain wearing eighty-pound backpacks. Their facial muscles would never be able to exert the extra energy required.

There was no way I could survive nine minutes, much less nine days, in the mountains carrying an eighty-pound backpack. I decided I would forget this idea, go back to Billings, and spend the next nine days reading novels about backpacking. I tottered toward where I had last seen the van, but, alas, it had long since disappeared. I was stranded on the mountain with Lou and nine teen-aged boys.

“OK,” Lou bellowed, “Since it’s your first day, we'll only hike five hours. Let’s move out so we can set up camp early and prepare dinner.” And he started walking straight up the mountain.

Nine teenaged boys wearing eighty-five pound backpacks followed Lou up the mountain. A hunched-over, forty-four year, very old woman trudged behind, clutching at hanging branches and bulging boulders to pull herself up, gasping for breath and wondering what kind of idiot she was to have PAID to participate in this course.

As the hours passed and the distance between the others and me expanded, Lou shouted down that they would go ahead and set up camp without me and I could help cook another night. Help cook? Wasn’t it enough that I was carrying parts of the food? This was not the way my Grand Canyon cruise had gone.

I staggered into camp two hours after everyone else. Dinner was finished, and everyone was preparing for bed. They had saved me a bowl of cold, gummy spaghetti mixed with dead mosquitoes and walking ants.

“I’m not hungry,” I gasped.

“That’s fine,” replied Lou, “but a rule of Outward Bound is that we leave nothing behind to spoil the mountains. You don’t have to eat your dinner, but if you don't, you’ll have to carry it in your backpack for the rest of the trip.”

I picked out the walking ants and ate my gummy spaghetti and dead mosquitoes. Then I asked Lou for a roll of toilet paper and directions to the toilet. Lou walked away - I assumed to get the toilet paper - and reappeared with several items that he laid on the ground in front of me.

“Take your choice,” he said, as he pointed to a twig, a stone, and a leaf. Then he pointed to a clump of trees behind him. “When you're camping,” he smiled, “any place can be a toilet.”

The secluded commode of my dreams became a distant, fat tree; a batch of damp moss replaced my Charmin. I returned to camp, stumbled into the nearest tent (already filled with two giggling teens named Sam and Oscar) and dropped into a soothing coma.

In the middle of the night, Lou woke us so we could get an early start. Today we were expected to hike for eight hours before setting up camp and cooking dinner. But we were allowed a five minute lunch break during which Lou handed us each a lump of hard cheese and 2 stale crackers. Oscar and Sam, my teenaged tent mates, got me through the day by pushing me over boulders, pulling me up trails, and telling me it was just a little bit further until I could rest. In other words, they kept lying to me, but somehow kept me moving.

Lou told us two Outward Bound instructors would drive in from Billings the next day to help us rock climb and rappel. I was overjoyed. This meant I could drive back to Billings with them and evade this Hell.

But when I crawled into my tent, Oscar and Sam told me they were quitting too and would go back to Billings the next day with the instructors. Now I was an “older” woman, but these were youngsters with their whole lives ahead of them – plus they had pushed me over all those boulders. If I quit, my family would say I never should have tried to do it in the first place. If these boys quit, they would undoubtedly spend the rest of their lives giving up when things got tough. So I spent the next two hours convincing them they could do this harrowing course and they did have the stamina to struggle onwards and achieve the summit. They bought it, but after selling them my propaganda, how could I give up and leave? I would have to stay as well – stuck for six more days on this mountain-made misery.

The days that followed turtled ever upwards. Somehow Outward Bound had found mountains that only went up, never down. I couldn't even admire the scenery. At each plateau, Lou would say, “Isn’t this pretty now it’s time to climb again” all in the same breath. Looking back at that visit to Montana, I remember only that I was so bent over carrying my eighty-pound pack that all I saw were the stones and twigs on the trail.

At last we got to our day of 24-hour solos. Lou took me to a distant part of the mountain, handed me a whistle, and left me with the instruction that I could only blow the whistle if a rattlesnake bit me or a bear tried to eat me up. As soon as he disappeared down the mountainside, I collapsed on the ground and thanked God for creating a Day of Rest where not only He but I also could recline. I had gratefully left my backpack at the campsite. No one would tell me I had to walk uphill for a whole 24 hours. I was ecstatic. This was supposed to be a fasting solo so that neighboring bears wouldn’t sniff our food and come calling, but I don’t like to skip meals so I had hidden two Mars Bars in my pocket and had a wonderful time dining while reclining and admiring Montana’s moon and stars. It was the first and only time I was able to look at sky instead of ground.

Those Sabbath hours whizzed by. Lou arrived, led me back to camp, and told us to prepare to march. At least the day was warm so, for the first time, we were able to don shorts and tee shirts before continuing our trudge upwards.   

Wind and icy rain swirled in just as we got to the summit. It was freezing, but before we could pull warmer clothes from our packs, lightning struck a nearby tree.

Lou yelled: “Spread out so that if you’re struck by lightning, the bolt won’t jump from you to someone else. Squat on your backpacks with your hands over your heads and don’t move.”

We each did as told. Which is how I came to be squatting on my backpack, shivering in icy rain, wearing dripping shorts and a drenched tee shirt, waiting for lightning to strike me dead on a Montana mountaintop.

I waited expectantly and finally heard God calling me. I tried to puzzle out why, if I was dead, I was still saturated with ice. God called again. And again. It was odd. God’s voice sounded like Lou’s voice. It turned out it WAS Lou’s voice. He was yelling at me that the lightning storm had passed. He was screaming at me to get up, put on my eighty-pound backpack, and trudge three more hours back to camp where I would have to eat my dinner or carry it in my backpack. When I finally made it back to camp in my ice-logged clothing, I’m not sure I was grateful not to be dead.

That was the last night of our Outward Bound “experience”. Lou met with each of us, telling us how we had done on the course, and whether we deserved to be awarded the revered Outward Bound pin that would forevermore remind us that we could survive anything and endure everything.

I sat before him with trepidation. He told me I was the most unprepared climber he had ever had but, because I stuck with it and never gave up, I showed true Outward Bound spirit. He awarded me the prized pin and told me he wanted me to return the following summer to help with a group of “older women”. I told him I would think about it.

When we got back to the real world, I checked into the first motel we passed. I knew if I didn’t shower, I wouldn’t be allowed to board my airplane. It took three shampoos to extract the twigs and leaves from my hair and four soapings to dislodge the dirt from my body. Afterwards, I basked in the comfort of the hotel’s Posturepedic bed until it was time to go to the airport.

Once I was home, I briefly pondered Lou’s offer (briefly) for the following summer, but quickly determined that I detested eighty-pound backpacks, fishing walking ants out of gummy spaghetti, toilet paperless trees, trudging forever uphill, teenaged boys who kept telling me we were almost at the top of the mountain when we were miles away, and that I would NEVER EVER sign up for an Outward Bound Voyage again.  My future travels would consist of porters, midnight buffets, marbled bathrooms, silk sheeted beds, and mundane chitchat with my relatives. And I would wear my Outward Bound Survival Pin every Earth Day.