Foot travel in Patagonia

Our second day of backpacking was the most challenging.  Since the students had learned a lot of leadership during the sea kayaking section, and because they had already been 'leader of the day' we decided to throw them back into that role right from the start of the backpacking section.  I would like to hear from the students what they think of that in hind sight, but they were eager to be leading again, so we let them go for it.  The challenge, though, is that while backpacking has some similar components, there are a lot of new skills to be learned and implemented.  Navigation is a great example.  There are many some aspects of sea kayak navigation that can be transfered to backpacking but on the whole it's quite a bit different. For one, there's this whole topographic line thing that has to be mastered.  While navigating by sea kayak you sometimes use the topographic lines on a nautical chart to identify major terrain features, but in the backpacking world you often have to identify much smaller terrain features and read into the topographic lines as you get familiar with the area.  'Micro navigation' is a term we use to refer to the process of finding your way through the small terrain features after you've determined where you are and where you want to go in the big picture.  To top it all off you have a heavy pack, streams or rivers to cross, brush and trees to fight your way through etc.

 Betsy is the young woman in the middle of the stream pictured above.  She was ready to quit at the end of backpacking day two.  My hiking group arrived into camp only about 20 minutes after hers and she was lying down on the forest floor exhausted and nearly in tears.  I asked her how she was doing, and she said it had been a rough day and that she would like to talk to me later.  So after dinner we met and she told me she didn't think she could do it.  She was thinking she wanted to quit--she wanted to go home.  In my mind I knew she was just hitting a mental block, that she was fully capable of continuing, but just didn't believe in her capabilities.  I told her the decision to stay or go was ultimately hers, but that I knew she could do it if she just made her mind up that she wouldn't quit.  I also told her that she coundn't exactly quit now--the road was still three days travel away--but once she got there she could go home if she chose to.  I asked her why she came on this huge NOLS expedition to  begin with. Her response was that she had been having trouble getting through college--she would get to the middle of a semester and get overwhelmed with the amount of work to be done and she would give up.  So she came to NOLS to overcome that tendancy.  Here she was, though, ready to do the same thing.  We continued to talk about strategies to make tomorrow a better day and then she went back to her tent area to get ready for bed and ready for the next day.  I don't know what happened that night, but the next morning she was rearing to go-- and she hiked strong all the next day!  Somehow she got over the mental block that was holding her back and she pushed through.  It was amazing.  One of the leadership skills we teach at NOLS we call 'Tolerance for Adversity and Uncertainty.'  There are things we encounter on an expedition or in life that we don't have any control over, so we do our best to make the most of them and enjoy life as best we can despite those hardships.  It's good to go through challenging times and to have adversity enter our lives every so often if for no other reason than to help us appreciate the blessings we take for granted.