Chapter 6: Cosmic Fate

 Chapter 6: Cosmic Fate

Purely by luck, my arrival at the Minnesota Outward Bound School was timed perfectly; it landed in the middle of staff training for the summer instructors. That made for the most people to hang out with, and no courses in the field or students in base camp meant some free time for staff and a relaxed atmosphere. 

To be clear, however, I really had no business being there. As a former student, I had a standing invitation to *visit,* as in "poke my head in at the office and say hello!" Being an instructor at a "sister" organization that hired from the same pool of talent might have stretched that hospitality to spending a night. But there was absolutely no justification for staying seven nights, inserting myself completely into their staff training, eating every meal there, offering an unrequested critique of their ropes course, and distracting a significant portion of the female staff with pointless romantic intrigue. Yet somehow I managed to do all that!

 Allow me a couple of asides before we get into this messy week...

1: For readers who were born after the discovery of fire, a brief technology lesson: In the primitive era in which this story takes place, there was a type of paper that was covered on one side with a dark substance. If you sandwiched that paper between two pieces of regular paper, and wrote on the top one, the writing would rub the dark stuff onto the bottom peice of paper, and you would get a copy of what you had written, if you can imagine such a wonderous thing! 

Because I am somewhat of a compulsive historian/archivist, I used that cutting-edge invention to make copies of every letter, note, and card that I wrote while on the trip, so I have those to complement the information in my journal, in re-creating the events and feelings of the trip.

2: In high school, I had the extraordinary good fortune to have a teacher who "got" me, and who dispensed wisdom far beyond the curriculum. Tess Bailey became my confidante - the adult I went to for advice about life. At one point, probably in response to my confessing that I had crushes on several girls, she said, "Falling in love is the BEST feeling in the world! You should try to do it as often as you can!" I took her words to heart.

 

Tess Bailey, taking the class outside just because it was a beautiful day.

Also, some of the girls I had crushes on!

 

 

May 7, Wednesday: 51.4miles (1786.2)

My time at MOBS started innocuously enough, though I did get a cool reception from the director. But an instructor I had worked with at the Wilderness School, Kevin, was there, and he gave me a real welcome. I even joined some people who were making music that evening, and played my flute a little. (Yes, as light as I packed, I still brought my flute, though not its bulky case; I sewed little cloth tubes for each section and packed them in my extra clothing.)

May 8, Thursday: 35.2 miles (1821.4)

"Kevin got a pass on the day's training, so we rode into Ely (pronounced "EE-lee) and did laundry, got mail, etc. When we got back, I did some bike maintenance: new tire on the back, and the spare tire onto the front because as I wrote, "wearing thru the sidewall did bad things to that tire." Wrote letters and studied maps, trying to settle on a route for the rest of the trip.

May 9, Friday

Decided on a route across N, Dakota and Montana. Hung out at the ropes course this morning, then rock climbing session with Kevin's group this afternoon. "I couldn't actually climb because I hadn't gotten the OK from the program director, but it still gave me a shared experience with some of the people here, and the bonds that come with that. I feel especially close with 'Christie,' (not her real name) and comfortable enough that we exchanged back rubs this evening - something I've sorely missed - the giving at least as much as the receiving."

"I've also felt a lot of warmth from Jo McLellan, and [like every other man here] I'm madly infatuated with 'Heidi.' Heidi's not much of a problem, since she's so clearly out of my league, but then again, she did ask me to work on her bike this morning, (heart skips a beat) so who knows?"

Photo of Jo McLellan taken later that summer by my friend, fellow OB Instructor and award-winning photographer Steve Thomas. Small world!

"I found myself feeling torn between giving attention to Christie and giving attention to Jo, and feeling a little uncomfortable when one saw me with the other. That's pretty funny when I think about it - I've been here two days and I'm already in love with three women! I'd hate to think what would happen if I were here all summer!"

*I would like to point out, however, that several years later I would end up finding the woman who would become my wife and the love of my life, at another Outward Bound school, so while I may have been barking up the wrong tree(s!), I was in the right type of forest!

This photo is not from my bike trip, but I thought you all might need a visual break!

 

May 10, Saturday

I got the OK to participate, so I paddled with the whitewater canoing group this morning, (yes, they have white water in Minnesota!) and did parts of the ropes course this afternoon. But then this evening Kevin got word that the big-wigs are getting antsy about me still being here. We both independently recalled the same adage from Ben Franklin, that "Fish and visitors smell in 3 days."

Fish and visitors aside, I probably had done nothing to prolong my welcome when I spoke up forcefully at the debrief about the day, with the big-wigs present. Another digression here, but a necessary one.

While at the ropes course, I noticed a problem with the zip line that both increased the risk of shoulder injuries to participants, and much more importantly, risked a catastrophic failure of the zip line itself, which would send the participant directly into the ground, from as much as 40 feet up. It was a problem we had confronted and solved when I helped build the ropes course at the Wilderness School, and I explained the solution we had come up with, which cost almost nothing beyond a few hours of labor. 

I was appalled when the "cool reception" directer, 'Dick' (not his real name, but as fitting a pseudonym as ever there was) dismissed my warning out-of-hand, and belittled me while he was at it.

The zip line we built at the Wilderness School

 May 11, Sunday

I laid low today, writing letters and spending some time with Christie. Tonight 4 of us took a sauna, and when we got out, we were treated to a tremendous display of northern lights, stretching over the entire sky!

May 12, Monday

"I helped with the morning service project, cleaning up one of the buildings. I didn't leave today, because it's the last day of staff training, so Christie has the day off tomorrow, and I thought it would be nice to go for a bike ride with her. We slept out (just slept!) under the stars and northern lights last night. We are seen as an item around here, which doesn't feel entirely good." 

Seeing that on the page, it feels like it needs explanation. Back to my senior year of high school and Tess Bailey. I had a tremendous crush on a fellow senior, and wanted to ask her to the prom, but before I got the courage, a junior girl asked *me,* a thing almost unheard of in those early days of feminism! I stalled with some excuse about not being sure I could afford it, and raced to Ms. Bailey for advice. She told me in no uncertain terms that if a junior girl had mustered the unimaginable courage it had to have taken to ask a senior boy to the prom, I HAD to go with her. So I did, and I'm not sorry I did, because she was a really sweet girl, and I wouldn't have wanted to hurt her for anything in the world. But I didn't feel the same way she did, and to this day I feel a pang of regret that I couldn't give her the prom experience she deserved. That's kind of how it felt with Christie.

"There was a party this evening... fun, but SO tangled! I wanted to flirt with Heidi, I wanted to hang out with Jo, I felt I should be giving attention to Christie, but meanwhile I was dancing with 'Melissa.' AAAK! I give up!"

May 13, Tuesday: 37.6 miles (1859.0)

I know you're seeing the mileage in the dateline above and thinking: "Thank god he got out of there before things blew up!" Don't kid yourself; I was not that smart. The mileage just reflects a ride with Christie.

"We rode east on Rt. 1 until I broke a spoke. I fixed it, we had lunch, and rode back. Kind of nice, but I felt we needed to have a more substantive talk than we did. We drove to Ely where she treated me to dinner. We hung out in the kitchen when we got back, and finally talked about 'us,' and whether we can learn anything from our brief time together. I didn't feel a complete resolution, but I'm not sure what a resolution could have looked like."

 May 14, Wednesday: 50.8 miles (1909.8)

"I'd have to say, this was one of the worst days of the trip, emotionally. I was sitting in the dining hall this morning writing goodbye notes to people who weren't around, when [a big-wig] came over and bawled me out for still being there. I told him I was just about to leave, but he seemed to want to keep scolding me anyway, and I couldn't really blame him. I knew I was completely in the wrong, and I was mortified, and wished I could just shrivel up and disappear. I slunk away to pack up."

I found Christie before I left, and she gave me [a sentimental present, tiny so it wouldn't add weight to the bike.] We hugged and shared some tears and said goodbye. I realize now as I think about it that I was so focused on escaping the awful feeling of being yelled at that I didn't look back as I rode away. I wish I had - it might have made a difference to her.

 But wait... What about my "Lingering Ardent Untenable Romantic Attachment"?

  Laura would not arrive for another week, so there was never any chance I was going to still be there to see her. I did leave her a note, which included quite possibly the most prophetic words I have ever written: "It seems almost certain to me that you will meet someone here and fall in love and share a wonderful summer, and I will be pedalling on some dirt road, drowned in solitude."

As it turned out, she did develop an interest in someone that summer, (one of the guys I had played music with!) and in a twist of cosmic fate that astounds me to this day, he just happened to be the person who was on the zip line when it failed in exactly the way I had warned about, slamming him into the rocky ground below. Laura visited him at the hospital and spent a lot of time with him while he was recovering, and that cemented their relationship. 

They married a couple of years later, had two wonderful children, and now grandchildren. I went to their wedding, they came to mine, and we have been lifelong friends, visiting and even vacationing together to this day.

But of course, at the time, I didn't know any of that would happen.

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