Outdoor Education During a Pandemic

I am an outdoor educator, during a pandemic, with a mandate to shelter in place. You can imagine that it would be difficult to find ways to stay relevant with my students and the defined outcomes of our outdoor leadership program.

In talking with other instructors I opened up a dialogue with my students to get their input on how to make this experience worthwhile. We settled on an experimental model where they can use a web interface to share the things they have been learning, link to resources they have found, add pictures, videos and texts, and then comment on. Turns out they wanted a blog. We can do that. So we set about create a blog structure in our LMS (Learning Management System... oh digital education you are so sexy.)

I created a page as well, to get in the spirit of things, and I realized how much I enjoy this medium. I have decided to also post my process here. Last week I listened to a podcast that made a strong case for documenting this time in our lives. In that light, I give you my first HREC 139 Outdoor Leadership and Ethics COVID19 Blog Post:

Wednesday April 8, 2020

A Brave New World Indeed

We just finished class and are trialing a new form of self directed learning. The goal is to take the work we are already doing for self study and improvement around the outdoor industry and compiling our learning into an editable Canvas Page blog for the students in our class. For this first post I want to identify my current search goals and link some things I have found and/or that are keeping me sane.

My search goals revolve around how we are recreating amidst COVID19, how to effectively teach outdoor skills in an online environment, and what other enthusiasts are doing/thinking about outside.

First, we are in week 3 of online learning and I have a new office helper:

He doesn't have a name yet because we have a 3 day rule for naming pets. At the animal shelter he was known as Hiccup.

Second, I saw a great post on the Gossamer Gear Blog, 25 Indoor Activities for Outdoorsy People During Self Quarantine It has some good ones. Gossamer Gear is an ultra light backpacking company so she is focused a lot on ultra light hiking concerns (like #2 Weigh EVERYTHING (it’ll help you make some gear list comparisons for your trips)) but there are some other great gems like #5, 8, 12, 16, 18 and more.)

I have been really interested in what This Guy has to say about recreating in the time of COVID in direct contrast with what my friends Sean and Paul are doing. I also respect what they have going on at the City, there mindset is to be low profile and self contained, enjoy remote work from their vans, and work hard projects.

One of our adjuncts, Jonathan Preuss, has a stellar personal website he uses to document his professional life at https://www.jpadventures.com/ I think this is an awesome way to present yourself to prospective employers and clients. As an up and coming outdoor professional you all could take control of your narrative and claim your place as a professional.

This is my first run at the blog and I would encourage everyone to give it a shot. You can see the discussion that led to this endeavor on this Canvas site under ZOOM-> Previous Recordings-> April 8th if you missed this session.

Feel free to edit this page and post comments below. Remember to own your edits by identifying yourself ;-)

Mike

A retrospective from 22 Hours Pre Smoke n' Fire

She'll be comin' 'round the corner when she comes. Race day is fast approaching. It's funny when I try to track back to when I committed to this race. I've come down to 3 specific instances. The first is sometime in January when I was building out the fall schedule and left an open weekend for September 12th-15th. That was the big move, creating an opportunity to race. I don't think I was committed then, more like interested and leaving my options open. But, had I not done that I wouldn't be sitting here with a pile of clothes, food, and gear in my living room.

The second instance is when my badass wife decided to run the Scout Mountain Ultra. When she started training in earnest it made this race seem like a no-brainer. At that point we were a couple with lofty endurance goals. Of course, Nat is way more disciplined and forward thinking than I am. I assure you she did not have a pile of gear, clothes and food in the living room the day before the race.

The third instance was mid June when I had the privilege of working a  NOLS course with Kait Boyle. Kait is a mountain biker. She rides her bikes fast and far. She, in fact, gets paid (not enough of course) to ride her bikes really fast for a really long time. I believe her title would be Professional Ultra-Endurance Mountain Bike Racer. It was serendipitous that I got to work with Kait for a lot of reasons, but in the context of that pile of clothes and gear in the next room she helped galvanize a vision for how I would actually do the thing. Over the course of a week, Kait helped me understand what it was I was actually going to attempt. She patiently answered my questions gear, food, mental planning, strategy, and training. Most importantly she made it seem like an event I could actually complete. By the end of our hiking course I had motivation and a training plan. Up until that point I had only a vague understanding of how I was going to get ready to ride.

Well, over the next 3 months I faithfully plodded along with the training plan, slowly acquiring bits and bobs to put on my bike and my person for this attempt. By the time school started I was a few weeks out, tired, and worried about getting sick. The last 3 weeks has been a balancing act of "cross training" on the river for classes, and trying to keep the fall sinus infection/cold train at bay. This put a major damper on my final ramp up/taper of the training plan, but I figured I wouldn't do anyone any good if I just imploded. So, here I sit on the eve of the race wondering if I put in enough time, if I am bringing too much gear, if I am not bringing enough gear, or if it doesn't matter because my body is going to self destruct either way.

I have been assured by people I trust that I am going to be fine. I bet they are right. There is a well established pattern of anxiety and stress before a trip that settles down once all the other options and responsibilities slip into the rear view as the trip commences. I am patiently looking forward to that sense of inevitability tomorrow as I roll down the Boise greenbelt in a pack of 60ish riders. If all else fails, I hear that the food is great out at Smoky Bar.

Mike

Smoke N' Fire 400

Training at the County Fair

The Smoke N' Fire 400 starts in one week. I am in preparation mode, and looking for a place to
chronicle the last week of bumbling around.

As it stands, I will be riding my incredibly durable and very heavy Surly Krampus. I find myself struggling with just how much storage to put on the bike. Long experience backpacking and traveling has taught me that I will fill any space that I have so I might as well limit my options.

The Steed

The race started calling to me a few years ago. I was camped on the Payette River outside of Garden Valley. Three bikers came rolling into our campsite at dusk. Being a social creature and a lover of bikes I ambled over to the water spigot and chatted them up. They had just descended the pass from Lowman  and were looking at the last arduous leg of their ride. It turns out they were racing the Smoke n Fire and were in 8th, 9th, and 10th place respectively. They were covered in dirt and ash, obviously exhausted and strangely exhilarated. I watched them roll out of camp down to Garden Valley and the Subway. I had no idea what they were doing but I marked it as something to look up later.

Idaho is covered in potato fields. Potatoes everywhere. Nothing but potatoes, except a few meager creases that have some water, and some topography. There are even a few hot springs in far flung corners of the state. It is a rather dull state what with all of the potatoes. That being said a few optimistic souls have tried to spice it up a little bit. Some of these souls are cyclists and they made a little loop that follows some water, climbs some of the meager topography and connects a few hot springs. As these things go, someone else decided to set up a race to see how fast they could ride the loop, thus the Smoke n' Fire. Those riders I saw that night were trying to squeeze some excitement out of the dull, repetitive nature of Idahos potato country. Now, 2 years later I am going to try the same.

Winter Wonderland

I started "training" in January when I set the goal of riding my bike to school once a week for the spring semester. This was one of those masochistic goals that catches on when you are warm, dry, and rested, often drinking something delicious and relaxed. I believe these impulses come from the lizard brain deep inside us that is primed for terror and discomfort. My theory is that this part of our brain is bored. The rest of our more developed reasoning skills are engaged in enjoying the warmth and delicious drinks and while the lizard brain quietly goes about its work. Before you know it, you have turned to a few friends and confidants and made some comment that you can't in good faith un-say like "I think it would be a good idea to start doing a winter bike commute to work" these friends might get concerned and say something like "but the road is pretty dangerous!" "oh! No! who would ride the road? I am going to ride into the canyon, then out the other side. I'll call it the Rim to Rim commute, it will be great..." And then you're stuck. It has a name, you have to do it.

Route Map from the Smoke n' Fire 400 Website

This early training was perfect. It was cold, wet, dark, difficult, and no one really cared. Great training for an even more audacious effort. The lizard brain had me. Before long I was telling friends, confidants, complete strangers about this race I was going to do. 400ish miles, no support, no entry fees, and 1000's of feet of climbing. What could go wrong?

Lucky for me, I met a few friends this summer that got me pointed in a more coherent training trajectory. I have a training plan, I have some sort of a game plan, I have a goal, and I have a loving wife who would prefer to funnel resources to an ill-conceived endurance race as long as it increases my chances of living forever.

So, here I sit in a coffee shop, avoiding actual work, typing up my thoughts pre-race, on a blog that has not been updated in 5 years.

Sometimes we are just drawn to exercises in futility, perpetual Don Quixote-esque quests, tilting at our windmills.  But to document is a way of making sense of the world. I won't make any promises, but stay tuned for more.

Mike

I lost a friend, mentor and uncle

Yesterday, I woke up to the news. I was flat, it didn't click. "Your Uncle Robert passed away this morning from a heart attack..." Ok, shit, well, shit.
I didn't know what to do with it. Uncle Robert is always there for me to call when Lola won't start. He's always at the house when I come to San Antonio. He's the guy to call when you need a last minute limo for a bachelor party. He taught me how to ski. He is my youngest uncle. We look so much alike at times it's scary. I can't complain he was a good looking man. He was always smiling, always good for a laugh.

So what do you do with that news? What can you do. You do the only sane thing, walk into the kitchen, start grinding coffee, then curl up on the couch and cry, in huge racking fits. Because, well, shit what else can you do? I loved that man. I always assumed I would see him again, I used to joke about being next in line for his bus if he ever died, it's not funny any more. I'd much rather have him here. I don't cry much, Natalie had never actually seen me cry until yesterday, then it happened twice. The second time was when my sweet mom called me and neither one of us could hold it together, I almost wrecked the car. Good thing Natalie is asleep now, or she would have seen me crying again. If you see someone cry three times, then it is an expected response. Lucky for me she's asleep.

Robert loved cars. We both love cars. More specifically we love Volkswagens. Sure he had a Porsche he was redoing, the occasional Beamer in the yard, I think there was an old MG and he always asked me if that little hunk of metal under the tarp on 7th was an old Mini (editors note I think it was an early Honda) but his pride and joy was "my bus." I have Lola, he had his bus. We love our old, finicky, beautiful cars. We loved talking about them, dreaming about next steps, showing them to people, even occasionally working on them. I always new I could call Uncle Robert, with no pre-amble, without talking for months, and get straight to car talk "Mikey what's happening?" "Oh no much, so Lola won't turn left when it's raining..." and off we'd go, long distance shop talk. I can't tell you how many times that happened.I'm going to miss him.
Uncle Robert was a pivotal figure in my life. He loved his family so much, and we are all reeling with the loss. I'm going to miss him.

.settling...eventually.

mike has come and left again since the last post.  it was so good to have him here, to have home.  we love it.  his course in wyoming with NOLS went splendidly, and he is now kayaking and rafting in Utah with the school until the beginning of september.  autumn is shaping up to be busy in the youngster world.  mike will head out mid sep to austin to pick up the rest of our stuff, we'll take a trip or two to "city of rocks" to soak in the gorgeous climbing weather then off to yosemite in october for what is guaranteed to be one of the best open elopements i've EVER had the pleasure of crashing (thx jersey and becky) ......

on the home front, i finish orientation with the hospital this week and move to nights!  as a researcher, I have fully informed myself of all the tips of owning your circadian rhythm, surviving and yes, even enjoying, the life of a night shift worker. I s'pose the trick tends to be nutrition, routine, discipline and a happy heart.  those things, i can do. the perks? higher pay, slower pace and breakfast for dinner . . . . always.  i would love to hear wisdom and victories from other night shift workers. keep the negatives, though - i need all the help i can get :)

In the in between, there has been compost building, cucumber pickling, pesto canning, bread making, car fixing, trail running, owl watching, friend making, music listening, job learning, adventure planning, curtain sewing, coffee drinking, spouse cuddling and dream mapping. life is good here in twin falls, idaho . . . . . mikeynat

"climb the mountains, and get their good tidings."

- john muir

twin falls, idaho

the mrs. here. 

you can usually tell me by my lack of capital letters, overuse of commas, love of ellipsis (look it up, i won't tell) and pensive statements or dramatic quotes (usually involving adventure, simplicity, wanting to be home but never wanting a home . . . yada, yada, yada ......) guilty as charged.

i find myself in twin falls, idaho, with mike in the field as an instructor with the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS).  he's been gone for three weeks now, with two to go.  just as with all other courses, we have no contact except for the letters i so eagerly receive mailed to me from the ration planes, donkeys or bears that visit him on the course (ok, not bears).  this has made relocation to the US and settling in idaho quite interesting.  he is guiding in the Wyoming Wilderness and i am starting my new position as an ICU Registered Nurse at St. Luke's Medical Center. Idaho has blown me away, and will continue to do so i am sure.  between the beautiful people, winding trails, rushing waters, small town charm, endless fields and rugged mountains..... i believe we have decades of adventure to be had in this grossly underrated state.

from our cross country travel of Australia to the relocation across the United States, with so many unknowns, it feels good to be here.  i have recently moved us in to a charming two bedroom, one bath home on endless acres of farmland about 20 minutes outside of town, with mike joining me this week.  the space generously provides us with kind neighbors, room for chickens, gardens, baking, creating, canning, preserving, slack lining and hammock napping - all thanks to the generosity of beautiful friends.  i will post images soon, but you can also find us on instagram as @mikeynat ........

welcome to our adventure.  never neglect your own,

nat

Treking in the Van Down Under

Ausralia

Vanlife

For the last five months we have been traveling around Australia farming, fishing, diving, hiking, climbing, and sailing. Our travels have taken us from the south coast of Tasmania to the Northeast coast of Queensland. We've documented the trip through photos on Instagram @mikeynat though we have neglected the blog.

Climbing Mt. Arapiles

 In July we will be returning to the US, I have picked up a contract with NOLS in the Wind River Range in Wyoming. Nat is in the process of applying for nursing jobs, there is a real possibility that I will go into the field not knowing where I will be returning to until I get back out.

Catchin' Sharks

On our travels we have met some amazing people and been recipients of bottomless hospitality. We've come to appreciate the value of a good meal and a welcoming home and look forward to sharing our home and table as we return.

As always, you can contact us through our Facebook, this blog, Instagram, or email. We hope everything is well in your world. Share a laugh, share a meal, and sit on your porch.

Byron Bay Sand Art

Love
Mike y Nat