Home Comings

8 years ago, a woman by the name of Katie Zanto created an alternative education program called Adventure, Risk, Challenge, or ARC. The program is a summer course that takes ten 9th/10th graders, who are classified as ELL into the woods for 40 days. During their time in the course, the students go on four separate expeditions into the wilderness. The first expedition is 8 days straight, and the last expedition is completely led and organized by the students. During their expeditions students are taught science, topography, cartography, leadership, wilderness survival, as well as intrapersonal skills. In between expeditions, students spend their days at base camp working on improving their reading and writing skills, as well as bettering their communication skills in order to live more effectively and peacefully in community.

About 2 weeks ago, as night was setting on Truckee, California, you could find me making my way down to the river banks to try to find a place to pitch my tent for the night. Just as I was pulling my tent from my pack, my phone rang. “Hey buddy, where you at?” It was my buddy Joe. For the last leg of my recent trip I decided to go up to visit Joe at his field site (he studies the social behavior of slave-making ants), which just so happens to be the same site used by ARC. 45 minutes after he called, he came and picked me up in front of the nearby 7/11, where I had already been labeled the new neighborhood homeless man. (For real. I had to turn down change from a guy walking into the market. Stop laughing.)

“You know, ARC is still going on. You should talk to some of the people there. I think they get back from their last expedition tomorrow or the day after.” 3 years ago, when I had first arrived back from my long trip in Africa, Joe had told me about ARC and had encouraged me to apply. Unfortunately, the director, Jen, told me that while I seemed a great fit for the program, I lacked a certain wilderness certificate to meet criteria. Unfortunately, at the time, I also lacked the money to pay for the course to receive it.

2 days after arriving at Sagehen Creek with Joe, I woke up to the sound of kids running around and shouting back and forth outside my cabin. After having my breakfast I walked out on the deck of the large cabin, and tapped on the shoulder of the nearest counselor. “Excuse me, do you know Jen by any chance?” The counselor turned her head, her brown hair whipping over her shoulder, a crooked grin on her face, and said, “I’m Jen.”

For the last 6 days of this summer’s ARC program, I had the opportunity to work side by side with 10 amazing students and 5 incredible educators. Though my efforts were tiny in comparison to the counselors working for the full 40 days, I got the chance to coach Minnie, Emily, Angela, Aldana, Jaira, Oscar, Brandon, Zach, Gerardo, and Jose through writing very personal works, and then performing those before the local community. More than that, I got a chance to listen to them as they shared their stories with me over meals, during free time, and while we worked; stories of separation, stories of mourning, stories of immigration, stories of loss, stories of alienation in a culture and a world that doesn’t seem to accept them for what they are—stories of perseverance. I welled with pride as they recited their poems in front of 50 community members on Tuesday night; as they taught science lessons to local elementary school children on Thursday; and as they read their “transformational essays” in front of their families this Saturday morning. Their words, so much more confident than when they arrived 40 days prior (according to the other counselors), tried to do what words have always tried to do: explain, connect, convey. “I was….now I am,” said Aldana.

For 40 days those 10 kids got a chance to be away from all the confines, material and otherwise, of their everyday lives. For 40 days, they were given the safety and security to be themselves fully, to explore themselves, to face themselves, to love themselves—to grow, and to learn. In getting a chance to step outside of their realities for a moment, they got to glimpse into one of the great truths that many people are never lucky enough, brave enough, or supported enough to see—they got a chance to see that they are truly valuable. They gained the confidence that we should hope for any of our youth. This is real education.

At the end of the closing lunch, I gave the kids hugs, and wished them well. I watched them as they reintegrated with their families, and while I saw the love between them, I also saw the awkwardness in their interactions. I heard them try to explain stories to their families, and I watched some of the families return blank stares, feigned nods of understanding, and the looks of confusion at inside jokes. I watched frustration start to creep on the faces of the students, for no matter the great strides they’d made in language they were learning another great truth: sometimes words will never be enough.

It has been 5 days now, and for as life-changing as their experience was, it is likely that many of them are struggling with applying much of what they learned to their lives at home. Home comings have a tendency to be like that after great journeys; for all that you learned out there, while beautiful and right, the world is a complex place made of complex beings that don’t work perfectly, and nothing ever fits just right. We all have truths and beliefs, and often times those conflict, so our solutions, though logical and plausible in our minds, are not so in the minds of everyone else. In its nature, the world then presents us with three choices: 1) Embrace the way the world is 2) Reject the world for what it is 3) Accept that the world is one way, but never forget that nothing is absolute, and human beings have the power to recreate and renew. There is always hope, and we are always free if we choose to be.

On the road, things are always so much clearer, but here I am on the porch swing in my mother’s front yard, and a haze is setting in. 3 nights ago I was sleeping out in a random field at the base of the Sierras, and all I could think about was the cold and the adventure of it all, but today I’m thinking about jobs, about money, about debt, about car insurance, of all things. In the end, I’m left with the realization that anyone who wants to have a shred of happiness must come to: there are no easy answers, no final solutions, no perfect plans; there is only life and the compromises that we must come to if we choose to live our lives together. Life with others requires patience.

Does this make the journeying meaningless? Does this make all the great lessons learned along the way worthless? No, because without those moments of reflection and clarity we might lose sight of our dreams and hopes, caught in the mire of the everyday struggles. “Ideals are like stars…we may never reach them, but they can guide us,” my priest once said in a homily. Our ideals, our dreams, our hopes, though often unrealistic, give us a sense of what matters and of who we are, allowing us to rethink those things that seem so set.

Perhaps it is in the moments of retreat and in the irrationality of our imaginings that our better selves connect.