Groups in Tents

Part of the magic of a group trip is how well you get to know your companions. Being with them constantly and seeing their private quirks and routines, sitting near them at all hours of the day, hearing how they eat, watching how they fiddle, smelling them before they have a chance to cover their scent. You know them quickly and intimately.

This is magnified with teenagers, who are more casual than adults and thus willing to let you in to their worlds. They are also not as practiced at hiding their foibles, so they either let it all hang out, or overcompensate self-consciously. It is easier to love a teen at these times because they are at their most genuine and their most vulnerable.

As an example, I was talking to a student named Jenny on my recent trip to Florida when she casually mentioned her 20 year old sister’s battle with alcoholism. It was a passing conversation. I asked if she was the oldest child and, bam, bam I learned of her concern for her older sister and her continuing struggles. She trusted me enough in that moment to share that far away from home, her mind was on her sister, Stacy.

A big part of what you discover about the secret lives of teenagers comes from what you overhear from neighboring tents. The zipping and unzipping of a frantic search for something lost, the soft arguing and the loud gossip. The squirming, the scratching, the farting, the snoring. Trip leaders quickly learn how to filter out the annoying while staying on alert for the disruptive. Soon, even the annoying becomes the cricket song of a tenting teacher’s half sleep.

One night in the middle of our trip my colleague and I heard a sharp cry, a ripping of a zipper flap and hard footsteps in the dark moving toward our tent. That, and a crying voice calling my name. These are sounds that get you out of your bag and on your feet quickly. Jenny ran up to me sobbing as I stumbled out of my tent and said, “my sister was hit by a car.” Then she pushed her cell phone to me like it was diseased.

Even as I write this I have to take a deep breath to continue.

On the other end of the line was a mother who had just lost her child. She spoke with the calm matter of factness that comes with the shock of grief. Stacy was hit by a car while she was crossing the street in a crosswalk. She was on her way home from an AA meeting and was celebrating her third month of sobriety. She was brain dead.

I don’t know how I was able to speak lucidly, but I did. In some shock myself, I was sympathetic and concise. We would take care of Jenny’s grief on our end and do our part to bring the family back together as quickly as possible. I did not know the mother at all, but we were connected in those minutes by the love of our own children and our care and concern for Jenny.

The logistics are boring, but you can imagine that they weren’t easy. Complicating matters was irregular cell phone reception and the necessity of working by flashlight. My trip team, my three colleagues in Florida, get high marks for handling the situation. We are four men, two of us parents, with 40 student camping trips between us. We were exhausted, but we each took a role and performed it efficiently and well. You always hope nothing will go wrong in the field, but it generally does. I was glad not to be a rookie that night. I was glad the others weren’t either.

Less than 24 hours later, Jenny was home and our trip was back on schedule with nary a glitch. I believe there were students who didn’t even know what happened. But I do. I was as close to the situation as a stranger can be.

Another Day on a River

I'm going to tell you a story that is 100% true and leaves out no details unless they are irrelevant or uninteresting. I'm telling it to see if I can make you laugh, but honestly, it's also a metaphor for my whole life right now.

I went on the annual SES canoe trip down the Canon River today. 200 teenagers, half of whom had never canoed before, were herded down a beautiful Minnesota river valley at the peak of autumn. All of them returned alive and each of them had an experience they will never forget.

Can you imagine the logistics? Buses, permission slips, canoe rental, helping the kids prepare for how to dress and how to canoe, getting first aid kits and arranging chaperones. And then you have to prepare your own bag, not forgetting to pack extra clothes and food for those children whose parents might forget. This year, as most, this last prep occurs after the first round of parent teacher conferences, which we had last night from 4-8.

I have to make special arrangements for my family and I volunteer to work half a day for free because I love that river and I love those kids and I really believe in my heart that canoeing down a cold river in the peak of fall makes everyone a better person for their whole life.

At the risk of sounding like I'm thumping my chest, a trip like that can't happen without a person like me. I know I'm not the best teacher, even at my school, but if you gotta pick a guy to be in that place on this day, you pick me first.

So I found myself at 8:45 am on a muddy bank in Cannon Falls. 70 canoes were in a line above me, Steaming bodies and red cheeks and nervous smiles. For the next 45 minutes, my job is to bring the front of every canoe into the water, make sure everyone gets safely on, and shove them downstream. Only way to do that is to be calf deep in 45 degree water and to smile cheerfully and confidently at every person in the line, giving the same calm instruction to each one, one moment heaving with all my might, the next patiently repeating what has already been said.

Because I'm the last one on the river, my canoe is the sweeper. The sweeper uprights overturned canoes (two today), it monitors hypothermia, it gives on the spot canoeing lessons ("you are not mixing a batter here, you're paddling a boat"), it reminds people to wear lifejackets, it points out wildlife, it administers first aid and it does whatever it can to maintain the morale of the weakest members of the herd. I'm not claiming I did this myself. I had three excellent partners in two canoes.

Every year, 6 miles into the trip, the teachers at the back end up splitting up and being the rear paddler in a canoe full of inexperienced, shivering and despondent students. Having someone who knows how to steer, has strong arms and knows how to beat exhaustion invariably moves things along. Today, I commandeered one canoe, then added another canoe's duffer 1/4 mile further up. Around me, six people were wearing pieces of my clothing. The duffer made herself as comfortable as possible directly in front of me, wearing 8 layers of wet cotton sweatpants. I only had 4 miles to go, but for the first mile, I couldn't distract myself from the fact that this poor girl smelled like ass. Not BO. Not farts. Ass.

We got em all in of course. And, in a rare departure from the norm, we got em in on time. My feet were numb as hell and I was itching for bacon, but the final job is to get kids to clear out their canoes and get on the bus. At that point the sun was shining and everyone was feeling fine.

Except the French teacher.

This guy left the business world because there was too much pressure in middle management. He's a mealy little know it all who cannot help but tell you his opinion any any subject he happens to overhear. He's got a candy ass goatee and looks like an over the hill satan gone soft. As is the custom of the French, when he speaks to me, one of his hands is always in the small of my back.

He's been asked to check off kids' names from a list made on the bus on the way down. Kid gets on the bus, he's safe and sound and his mom is happy, scribble his name from the list. Easy.

He walks up to me and he's clean and he's dry. He smells faintly of lemon basil soup, but I think it might be a lotion. He places his hand in the small of my back and says, "you know what you should do next year? You should type the names of all the kids who are going and put a check box next to each name. I don't know how to do it, but I've seen it done on a computer. That would make it easier to check these kids in. That's what you should do next year."

As I say, this is metaphor.

Youth Football

I haven't raised aggressive boys.

That isn't an apology. I'm not fond of the trait in others and I've actively discouraged in my sons. I like to think they are confident and enthusiastic and strong willed without being overbearing and selfish. I suspect genetics in involved as I'm not terribly aggressive myself. I stand in lines, I ask permission, I wait to be called on. It isn't that I don't like to win, it's just that I've found that I sometimes lose and I've come to terms with that.

In most areas of modern life, you can be successful without aggression, but that probably isn't true in sports. The whole point is to be the best by beating everyone else, which is tough to do if you don't go after it without hesitating about stepping on a toe or two. At very least I think it separates the best athletes from those who are just playing.

Baseball is one of the few physical games where you can be a little mild as still play the game well. In football, mildness is anathema. I'm still taken aback, being principally involved in baseball, at the unabashed bloodlust of so many people surrounding football. Players, coaches, fans. I don't have sufficient knowledge of the game to ever coach it, but the angry shouting in and of itself is enough for me to want to keep my distance. That's what I did last year.

This year, I liked the guys running the team. Coach Jon must be 6-6 290, but he runs his practices in a voice appropriate for a preschool Sunday school class. Sure, he occasionally loses it in games and throws his visor, or yells so loudly that every square inch of Shannon Park fields can hear his displeasure, but he fights it and often as not comes sheepishly back within 3 minutes with an apology and a "come on, guys". Coach Bob must be the mellowist body builder history has ever seen. He's imposing just in the act of crossing his arms and frowning, but, despite spending some 500 hours with him this summer, I've never heard a cross word. They're a couple of nice, goofy guys and with their good will and encouragement, I was reluctantly coaxed to the player side of the field.

The thing is, the shouters often win in football. Shaping burgeoning testosterone may require some volume, some anger and some physicality. That's mostly what I've seen from the opposing coaches all year. So while our team has speed, it has a good amount of football knowledge, it practices frequently and stays in games, it only has one win.

It didn't occur to me until after we won, but the in-game chat between team coaches, neither of which yet had a win, was as amiable as a backyard BBQ. It was all "Aw, shucks" and "that was a nice play".

What WAS occurring to me during the game was that our fastest player, the only one to have scored any TD's, was out for the season with a shattered kneecap. That our left guard had not taken his ADD medication. That our safety was asking about the identity of an overflying bird. That our nosetackle was still standing up before driving forward, that our center's pants were too small to be buttoned, that our quarterback believed in his heart that he'd been assigned to the bad news bears, that our 2 back was more interested in hitting the statistician than the linebacker and that our head coach was looking at his watch and talking about going to the Gopher's game.

If the meek shall inherit the Earth, they better hope that the next of kin is even meeker. That is how we got our only win.

There are still claims at our practices that "we can compete with any of the other teams" and "we're getting better every week". I'm not sure if that's coach speak or naivete, but I'm pretty sure its not true. There is still one game left in the season when we might get another win and there are other sports and other seasons. But after countless hours preparing and encouraging, even if it's only once, winning sure is a lot more fun than losing.

Not a Cowboy

Did you know that my wife is fascinated with horseback riding? It comes from all those damn historical romance books she reads, but one of our future vacations is going to be at a dude ranch. I shit you not.

About two years ago, when she revealed this, I asked her, never having ridden a horse WITH her and having a long standing ill ease with horses, "how many times have you ridden?" Answer? Never.

So, once in Tennessee and once in England, we rented horses and rode. Each time for me is an exercise in smiling through anxiety and discomfort for the benefit of my companions. I've ridden probably 20 times in my life and can honestly say I never really enjoyed it. I think I have a good attitude, but it isn't my thing. There just isn't much cowboy in me.

On a vacation to the West, it seemed appropriate to get on a horse. To get a taste of what the frontiersmen and settlers did. There were several opportunities within Yellowstone, but none of them would take my 7 year old niece. Rachel  did some research and found a couple of spots just outside the north entrance in Montana. Because of its location, we picked one called the Slip and Slide ranch.

We drove the two 30 foot RV's into Montana and up a mile long gravel road through a big wooden arching sign to Ryan's 900 acre ranch and home. It's beautiful, obviously. Rugged, but neat. Ryan and his family (wife and three kids) are waiting for us in the driveway and when I get out he shook my hand with the strongest grip I've ever felt. Huge bulging cowboy hands that squeezed me like I was a Canadian circus freak.

We sign ONE form. All of us on one together. No helmets, no body armor (seriously, they give you that in England), no questions about
ability level or weight or comfort....just 3 minutes of fast plain
talk about what not to do and how to proceed. He didn't even ask for
payment until he shook our hands goodbye at the end. He lifted both
my niece and nephew up on their horses with such efficiency that each
of them, surprised, almost went over the top. He would have done the
same with each of us, but no matter how intimidated I am by a horse
(bless you, Poncho, for submitting to my will), I will not be thrown
on top of one.

And off we went before the sunscreen was even fully applied. At the
lead of the line was Ryan's 8 year old daughter, in a pink cowboy hat
and matching boots. At the rear was his seven year old son and 4 year
old daughter, also garbed in pink. Ryan was training a new horse and
basically went up and down the line barking instructions like (to my
brother), "first ask, then encourage, then enforce. Don't make me
take you off that horse and put my little girl on." Occasionally, in
small lispy voices one of the kids would chime in, "go a little
faaasah. kick a little haaardah" or yammer away like an elementary
kid with a new friend. The boy pointed out the best trout lake and
told this great story about the time they saw a cougar. We saw hawks
and ducks and a huge herd of elk. Also bison, which is the livestock
Ryan raises. You can look all around on a horse and not worry about
where your feet are falling.

At the one quarter mark, the boy took the lead. He rode around the
line with his four year old sister and took my niece's reigns, the
two girls then rode ahead to circle back around to the tail of the
line. They were out of sight and I was making small talk with Ryan
when we heard, in the distance, squeals and screams from the two
girls. Ryan's ears perked...really, perked. He road up to the front
to meet the two, who were speeding back and squealing, "there's a
raaahtlah on the trail."

Ryan says (with the tone of "christ, you're gonna scare the
greenhorns"), "use your heads girls, calm down." He rides up and
dismounts. Moments later we see a rattlesnake skeleton fly 50 feet
into the air and into the shrubs. We were told by my sister in law,
who witnessed it, that he had crushed the snake with his boot, grabbed
it by the back of the head and pulled the entire spine out of the
snake's body, then tossed it. When I passed there was a second snake,
head and rattle removed, squirming by the trail.

"All in a days work?" I asked.

"Yeah, pretty much."

"What's the preferred tool for that job?"

"Always seems to be rocks around till you need one, but they work
best. Or a big stick"

He handed my brother the two bloody rattles and we moved on up the trail.

The Colorado River

I have no idea why I don't feel comfortable posting here until an event is long gone, but there you have it.  If it helps you, PRETEND I just got back from this trip.

Just back from 10 days of adventures in the mountains of Colorado.    Foremost among our activities were rafting, disc golf and geocaching, with a generous amount of decadent consumption sprinkled in.

We spent five days and two nights along some 50 miles of the Colorado River, fantastic by every measure.  For my friends with experience in the North Country, you can equate rafting to canoeing, with the following subtle differences:

• Rafting is easier.  If you aren’t the oarsman, you can swivel 360 degrees to take in the scenery, the wildlife and the sky at your leisure.  There are no portages, so the limit to your packing is the confines of a raft, not your back.  You can thus carry fresh meat, luxurious gear and a king’s weight of your favorite beverage.
  
• There is substantially more drama, from the cut of the canyons, to the thrill of the rapids, to the personalities of the folk you meet.  Part of this is the unpredictability of the mountain river as opposed to the waltzlike rhythm of a canoe on a northern lake.
  
• And…there are no mosquitoes.
  

My heart is still with a canoe, but I’ve spent more hours at dusk and dawn within it’s tapered ends, so you can hardly let that be the judge.

Our companions were a Breckenridge family with two girls, 6 and 4.  These girls are mountain born and bred and I’d put money on them in any venture.  However, they weren’t as used to my blend of enthusiastic hyperbole as my own boys are.  That taught me something about perspective.

In addition to wildlife highlights of river otter and golden eagle, we saw at Colorado National Monument, while camped on a 400’ ridge overlooking a canyon, what I later learned was a hare, but at the time believed was a jackrabbit. 

You can probably hear my voice saying the following (with expletives removed):

“That was the biggest rabbit I’ve ever seen.”

“That thing was a monster.”

“I can’t get over that.  The that jackrabbit was a man-eater.”

My own boys, Star Wars bred from three and constantly with me from the time they could talk, knew these comments for what you know them for.

But Mairi, the eldest mountain girl, looked at me with wide eyes as the sun was setting.

“I’m scared”

“Of what, Sweetie?”

 

…

 

…

 

“Jackrabbits”

…

Lesson learned.

 

I missed by bed, my bike and each of you, but that’s all.

Graduation Speech

Speaking at graduation is a wonderful honor, but I won't lie, it's hard. Everyone wants something different from you and there is a cliche at every turn. Before I ever did it, a colleague who I have a great deal of respect for asked for advice about what to say. I told him, "figure out why they picked you....then give em ten minutes of that."

Here was my attempt, given to 1200 excited and anxious people outdoors at the Minnesota Zoo Amphitheater.

When I try too hard at my writing, I fall into a workmanlike, explicit 5 paragraph essay style. I've been told that when it happens, I sound 'academic' (which would make my friends who are really academic smile) I'm afraid I've slipped into that here.. I rationalize even today that you really almost have to do that with the spoken word, that you have to stick to a visible structure and repeat yourself.

The Myth of Dichotomy

Ladies and Gentlemen, here we are again. It is a great honor to be able to speak to you tonight. Most teachers only get a group of students for a year. Not only have I spent two years with this group, you’ve been good enough to give me ten more minutes.

I hope you already know that as a teacher I don’t believe that best learning happens by you sitting and listening and me talking. The best learning happens by getting real experience. But since you’re about to go about getting nothing but real experience and since we’re all dressed up, I hope you won’t mind if I remind of some things before you go.

There is a tendency, by westerners at least, to break the world into dichotomies. A dichotomy is the categorization of the world into two separate and mutually exclusive groups. An example you all know is called a dichotomous key. Trees, for example are separated into deciduous and coniferous; they are either one or the other. A dichotomous key goes on to separate the leafy trees into simple and complex, toothed and smooth and so fourth. The advantage of a dichotomy is that it helps us simply divide and describe the world. We have a tendency, however; to attempt to make all problems into dichotomies, to make every situations appear as if you must go either entirely one way, or entirely in another. The problem is that the world is often not encompassed into only two possibilities and our belief that it is closes the door to solutions that lie in between. I believe that many of the dichotomies that our world gives us are mythical, that they do not really exist.

Let me give you an example that you have already heard. At the end of your junior year you heard that there are two ways to view the world, classically or romantically. In the classical view of the world there is a desire for explanations for all things in minute detail. That there is unfailing order and organization in the way things fit together that can be discovered and explained rationally. In the romantic view, order need not be found, because the nature of things was contained in the holistic experience of them. One view looked with hard eyes at the trees, the other, with soft eyes, at the forest. I don’t believe that dichotomy exists and there are many people in this class that prove it. The most hard core of you in terms of attention to detail and the ability to reduce things to their component parts have written beautiful essays about the intrinsic, unexplainable value of forests. And the most abstract of you have explained in detail how the components of a forest work together in a system. Clearly there is room in each of us for both the romantic and the classical. The dichotomy does not exist.

You may also have heard that you must choose between working hard and taking your job seriously and having a fun, carefree life. I don’t believe this dichotomy exists and you have proven to me every day that it doesn’t. I have seen many of you here between 6am and 6pm, working on unworkable computers to finish a project that was important to you. But invariably, you were here cheerfully and of your own free will. I’ve had some great laughs, shared some great stories and eaten some great baked goods in these out of school hours. Visitors to our school often wonder what makes our students tolerate our challenging curriculum. I tell them that you work hard because you love it here. Clearly, there is a middle ground between hard work and having fun.

Some people say that you have to make the choice between being an active, committed member of a community and being a healthy, unique individual. I don’t believe this dichotomy exists and you have proven to me every day that it doesn’t. Of course, each of you is here tonight with different skills, values and paths for the future. You have, in the past two years, carved a path for yourself that fits your individual talents and needs. At the same time you have consistently showed that you can be your own individual and still help others, still help the community as a whole find its way to be successful as well. If your talent was organization, you have given it, if it was art, you gave it, if it was making the computer work, you gave it. Each time you gave to the community, you earned something for yourself as well. It is possible to serve your self and a group at the same time and you’ve been proving it every day.

You’ll find that wherever you look people will try to limit your choices by telling you must either have one thing or the other. There are dozens of examples:
• You must either be dedicated to a career or dedicated to a family
• You must be a leader or be a follower
• You must either be a law-abiding citizen or a radical dissident
• That you must either use reason to solve the world’s problems or be a person of faith.

Hooey, hooey, hooey, hooey.

I see none of you are writing this down, so let me be clear about what I am not trying to say. I am not trying to say that dichotomies do not exist. After all, there will always be coniferous trees and deciduous trees. I’m not trying to say that you will not and should not lean toward one extreme or another. I am not trying to say that it will be easy to find the middle ground between ideas that appear to be opposite.

What I am trying to say is that to view the world as having two opposed ends closes you off from wonderful possibilities. It closes your eyes to solutions that encompass the best of both worlds. It makes the world seem like it is less complex and rich that it really is. I am saying that you are up to the task of finding the middle ground.

There is one last dichotomy that you have heard a thousand times, perhaps even from me. I’m sure you’ve heard that we must choose between having a healthy environment or having a strong economy. I’ll be honest with you, it’s a sticky wicket because it seems that the two ends are at such odds and I just don’t know if we can have both.

• But as I look out at you tonight I see so many of you that I know very well. I see so many of you whose characters I respect
• whose abilities I admire
• whose friendships I value.
I believe that if there is a middle ground to be found between the environment and our economy, it is you who will help to find it. This is not false hope or pride. I have seen what you can do.

I wish you all the best in your future. I believe in what you can do. Please keep in touch. Thank you and congratulations.

Back

Had a great fatherhood night during the storm last week. Sam traditionally wakes up for storms and comes in to our bedroom (also letting the damn cat in). So, when the storm was coming at bedtime, I volunteered to lay with him for 15 minutes until he got to sleep. He suggested that we lay in my bed so we could watch the lightening. I used to do that as a kid, too, cause I love a storm. He asked questions about electrons and how you burn from lightening and wind and molecules until he was satisfied and drifted off. I love that.

And I had a great teaching night at the open house. Old students looked me in the eye and shook my hand, new, excited students nodded appreciatively at my attempts to comfort them, and proud parents of both smiled at the men and women their children were becoming. Nice work if you can get it. We have three really great new teachers this year and I'm ready to be back in the saddle.

Did you hear Obama speak? I wonder what you thought of him. I like his cry to stop besmirching a person's loyalty, character, or patriotism if they disagree on a matter of philosophy or policy. I'm disgusted by rhetoric that accuses someone of high crimes just for disagreeing...doesn't seem right in a democracy.

I made a rare purchase for myself of a shirt. It’s one I saw at Valley Fair on my first trip there. It says, in small letters, "I'm very excited to be here". Come on, what occasion can you not wear that shirt for? I also commissioned a charature of Andrew, Sam and their almost cousin Jack. It turned out well, they appear as members of a future rock band. While they got painted, I slipped away with Chuck and did the ride the kids refused to do; Tower Power drop. Its the only ride that has absolutely THRILLED me every single time I've tried it. Heart pounding, sweaty handed, involuntary exclamation thrill. Fun.

A little peek at my recent canoe camping trip. The following was written back and forth in e-mails from my friends. These are guys who know my soul and aren't afraid to give me crap. They have a slightly different vision of me than I have of myself, but I find most people do. By the way, I don't fashion myself a fisherman and didn't bring a rod on the trip. I've always been drawn to fly-fishing though and I was trying it for my first time.

"I laugh when I think about Scotto fly casting. It was liking he was
whipping someone to death. Very impressive line speed. A lot of fly
fisherman would kill to be able to cast that fast."

"I was scared."

"His faced was fitted with a scowl, muscles were bulging, and line was
snapping like a whip. Scary."

"I may have hear him whisper "take that, motherf****r"."

The picture that triggered the story was remarkably benign. Its at the top of this post.

And the last regular feature I propose is a list. I’ll take suggestions, if you like, but my pick this week is 10 things I like now that I already liked when I graduated from high school.
Charles Dickens
My mother’s pork roast
My father’s sailboat
Prince
Coca Cola Classic
Oak trees
The planet Venus
Times New Roman
Baseball caps
The Renaissance Festival

My best to you this week.