Learning the Ropes--Wilderness (Jan. 23, 2011)

One of my new year's resolutions was to write a quick post about interesting things that I do. Although I have a history research paper looming on the horizon, I wanted to jot down some thoughts about my Wilderness Campskills Training Day before I started :)

Today was another early start. I do miss the weekends where I can get up at 10-11 and have a leisurely breakfast. This morning saw me crawl out of bed at the depressing hour of 8 AM. Tom, the director of wilderness, had given the Emergency Response students a brief delay...we didn't have to get to training until 9 AM. (Everyone else had to get there at 8)

After slowly waking up in the shower, I arrived at Wilderness training. We went down to the dungeons to pick up our packs that contained everything we would need to train in camp skills. The idea behind this session was to train us in basic backpack adjustment and stove use that we would need for our first years in August. The session started out with backpack skills. This year, the school has started to replace the standard 25-year old packs with brand-new Osprey Packs. The new packs are top of the line for program packs (they're basically a stripped-down version of my new pack). Tom had us take apart both types of pack and put them back together again. The goal that he had in mind was that we needed to be able to fix any pack quickly when we are out on expedition.

The second portion of the training concerned stoves. The school uses a type of camp stove called WhisperLites, which are extremely simple and durable. Tom taught us how to light the stoves (it's quite a complicated process, involving lighting the stove twice). Tom also taught us how to take both the fuel supply bottles and the stoves apart and fix any component that might be broken. To be honest, the design of the stoves is very simple, but ingenious. It's pretty difficult to design such a delicate instrument (and camp stoves really are) that can withstand heavy use (and wear/tear).

All in all, it was a really interesting day. Now, on to my research paper :P

A Rather Chilly Expedition (Jan. 14-16)

After nearly 3 months without a single Wilderness Expedition, I felt it was time to get my gear back out again and get away for the weekend. As it turns out, I really needed to get away and remind myself of what I was really doing at UWC. The expedition served as an excellent chance to remind myself.

This expedition was different from the previous three that I have been on. Rather than peel off into separate teams for the whole expedition, we had a specific location where we would all meet up--the yurt. A yurt is a circular building that has a pagoda-like roof on top of it. The plan for the expedition was to leave on Friday evening, spend Friday night at the Yurt. We would then spend all of Saturday at the yurt, learning to cross-country ski and then hike down on Sunday. I was pretty excited for my first expedition since the Grand Canyon!

But, as with all things at UWC, the trip didn't run to time. On Friday Evening, we were supposed to leave at around 8 PM, but a presentation ran over. Thus, we didn't leave until 10:30 PM. The drive to the trail head was about 2 hours...I wound up sleeping for most of it. We arrived at the Taos Ski Basin (our trail head) at around 12:30. By this time, it was pretty cold outside, but we all ran around unpacking equipment and preparing to leave. Unfortunately, this unpacking took quite a while. As a result, we didn't actually start our 2.5 hour hike up the trail until 1:30 AM. It was REALLY cold by this time. Fortunately, I had invested in some really good skiing gear the year before, I was pretty warm, albeit very cozily wrapped up.

The hike up was actually pretty fun. Night hiking is a really cool way to experience the outdoors. It's when the forest really comes alive. We could only see as far as our headlamps could reach, but the sounds of hiking through a forest covered in snow is almost magical. All in all, it was a pretty fun experience.

Once we reached the yurt, however, the fun was over. By 4 AM, it was absolutely frigid outside. It was so cold that the drops from my hydration pack froze on my jacket within 30 seconds. Rather unfortunately for us, we were one of the teams selected to sleep outside for the first night. The yurt could only accommodate half the UWC students at any one time, so teams had to take turns sleeping outside. Rather reluctantly, our team left the warmth of the yurt (we were allowed inside to warm ourselves) and set our minds towards setting up the tent.

Setting up a tent in a snow-covered forest is a very different proposition from just setting up a regular tent. Setting up a tent in a snow-covered forest at 4 AM is just asking for disaster. We didn't quite reach the disaster level, but we definitely teetered on the brink. To prepare a tent in those conditions, one must first dig out the area around where the tent is going to be set up. We brought a shovel with us for this express purpose. It was really hard work shoveling the snow out of the way, but by the end of the job, we felt the area looked pretty good. Next, it was time to set up the tent. We had to set up an inner "core" and a fly that insulated the core. It took us about an hour in total to set up both the tent and dig out the area. By 5 AM, we were all REALLY cold. (Or, at least, I was). While Kathryn, our team leader, set up the inside of the tent (we layered the floor with a groundsheet, followed by a space blanket, followed by an ensolite pad, and finally a sleeping bag.), I headed back to the yurt to warm up. It's always a wonderful feeling to feel the circulation rushing back into your extremities.

At 5:30 AM, I finally collapsed into my sleeping bag, inside the tent. It was absolutely incredible to finally get to sleep. There were four of us in the tent and we all cuddled up to each other, trying to get warm. The only problem? Daylight was only an hour away. When your sleeping outside, you usually wake up with the sun. Fortunately, I was so exhausted that I slept for about 3 hours before waking up. After waking up at 9 AM, I dozed for about two hours. I hadn't realized that my core body temperature had also dropped during this time, so I was shivering uncontrollably. It's a weird feeling to be so cold that your body spasms and you can't do anything about it. At around 11 AM, Tom (our Wilderness Director) finally came around to wake us up. Feeling very groggy, I crawled out of my sleeping back and started getting ready for the day. I didn't need to get dressed, having fallen into my sleeping back fully dressed. The day just got better, as I crawled out of our tent to find my backpack from solid. It seems that the residual moisture in the pack got so cold that it froze the pack. Wonderful.

Despite these setbacks, I carried on with the day. I headed over to the yurt to find out what was going on. It turns out that there were two options--snowshoe or cross-country ski. I chose the latter, having never had the chance to XC ski before. It proved to be a mistake. Tom took us out to a pasture and got us oriented on skis. After a couple of hours of practicing and realizing that cross-country skiing is NOT the same as downhill skiing (aka, you should try to use downhill technique while going downhill on Cross Country skis), we started to head up a trail towards Bull of the Woods Peak. It was really hard work. The school doesn't have enough "skins" to go around. Skins are important because they provide XC skis with grip to go uphill. I wasn't one of those fortunate enough to get a pair of skins, and so going uphill was slow and painful.

Eventually, I decided to turn around. It was getting pretty late, and so I decided to call it a day. Turning my skis around, I started to head downhill. Unfortunately, I hadn't really mastered the technique of going downhill on XC skis. Thus, I ended up wiping out at least 6 times, many of them embarrassingly. It was definitely a blow to my confidence, given that I'm decent at downhill skiing. Fortunately, however, I eventually reached the bottom and the yurt. At this point, the trip started to improve markedly. I sat inside the yurt and began to build up the wood fire. I've always enjoyed building fires and this one was no exception. Within an hour, I had a pretty good fire going, and I turned my attention elsewhere. As the yurt began to fill up, I started chatting to people I don't normally talk to. It was at this point that I really started to think long and hard about why I'm at UWC. Meeting and chatting with people I would normally never talk to is a reason I came here, and that evening gave me a chance to reflect a little bit.

After a very pleasant evening and dinner, I settled down for a long winter's nap. We only had to spend one night outside, and believe me, I was very grateful for the second night indoors. The yurt was relatively warm, and the quiet crackling of the fire was very soothing. I slept for a solid 12 hours, which was absolutely wonderful. After the previous night's escapades, it went a long way to correcting my massive sleep deficit.

Sunday began at 8 AM, when I was woken up by Tom. We packed up the yurt, had a quick breakfast, and prepared to hike down. By contrast with the hike up, the hike down was beautiful (because you could see everything) and very quick. It took us 50 minutes flat to hike down. We were the first team down, and it fell to us to organize packing up the bus, which we did we great gusto. Finally, we climbed aboard the bus and relaxed. It was a wonderful feeling. After being outside for nearly 3 days solid, sitting down on a bus was lovely. We made our way back to campus, but not before stopping to pick up some sodas. Tom treated us all to a lovely, cold can of soda. It was wonderful. Finally, we arrived back at campus, unpacked, cleaned up, and headed back to our dorms.

This trip was, in essence, a lesson in sleep deprivation while working hard. I got a total of about 5 hours of sleep Friday night (or rather, Saturday morning), yet I still went about the day as if I had gotten a full night's sleep. (A full night on wilderness is at least 8 hours). All in all, it was a successful trip that I ultimately enjoyed.

Radio--A Visit to KFUN (Jan. 22, 2011)

Today, a Saturday, started rather early (too early, if you ask me). However, there was an important reason behind the early start--a radio interview! There is a small, local radio station in Las Vegas, called KFUN (or KLVF) that allows the Las Vegas Peace and Justice Center to have a one hour talk show on Saturday mornings. Called Community Peace Radio, the show airs from 10-11 and invites members of the community to come on the show and discuss varies issues, topics, etc. As UWC students, we were invited on the show to discuss how we did MLK day.

MLK, or Martin Luther King Day, is a national holiday in the US, based around service. At UWC, we took MLK day pretty seriously. A pastor from Newark, NJ, Paul Graves, spent the weekend with us, learning about the UWC movement and educating us about Martin Luther King's philosophy. The weekend ultimately culminated in a day of service, designed to get all of the students out into the community. The service that I did was to clean the hot springs. The Hot Springs are natural springs that sit out to the west of the campus. They're owned by the college, but open for public use. Our job was to drain the hot springs and then scrub them clean. It was a really fun job that involved being both hot and cold at the same time. (The Hot Springs are rather hot, even when drained, while the outside temperature hovered around 50 F (12 C))

Moving back to today, I was asked by Tom Oden, the Vice-President for Academics at UWC to go and give an interview about MLK Day (He needed a Student Council member). Moving on to the actual event, Naomi, the CEC coordinator at school, asked me to be at the Welcome Center at 9:20. In true UWC fashion, I arrived at 9:25, followed by Naomi at 9:30. To be perfectly frank, time is often regarded as a guideline rather than a rule here. When Naomi arrived, Prestige (one of my co-years from Swaziland) and I hopped into the car. We drove to the outskirts of Las Vegas, to a portion I had never been to before. Suddenly, sitting high up on a hill above us was the radio station.

Although there's a massive interstate running through where that bridge is, the picture is relatively accurate. We drove up the hill towards the station, turning off the main road onto a gravel track. It certainly didn't feel like the way to a radio station! Once we arrived at the station, however, I was very impressed. Crammed into a small building was an entire radio station, showing off the best of local radio. The studio portion of the station looked something like the picture below.

The show host sat on the side closest to you and we sat on the other side of the wall, where the guest mikes were set up. Pat, the head of the Las Vegas Peace and Justice Center and also the host of Community Peace Radio showed up just after we got there. We went into the radio station and got ourselves situated. Before we knew it, we were on the air! Below, I've attached the link to the show. It's archived on the website of the Peace and Justice Center. I won't go that much into the show, after all, you can listen to it yourself! I come on about a third of the way into the show. Alternatively, you can just leave it playing until my voice starts floating through the speakers. I apologize in advance if I sound awful...I did have a cold at the time.

To be honest, going into it, I wasn't terribly enthusiastic. After all, I did have to get up at 9 AM on a Saturday morning. What horror. By the end of the show, however, I wound up really enjoying it. There was a certain satisfaction in returning to campus and seeing people just starting to wake up...having already done something productive yourself.


--The Link to the Show: http://lvpeacecenter.org/radio/youth-radio-samaritans-and-service/

Election Time! (Nov. 29-Dec. 11)

Jumping right back into the middle of things, Monday went fairly well overall...it was really cool to visit the castle turret and I survived my IOP. The remainder of the next two weeks really flew by. On Wednesday evening, we held the final election for Student Council. The way that Student Council works at UWC is very different from CA [Cary Academy]. There are 10 members on Student Council, two sets of 5. Either "set" of 5 is on a separate track that depends on when you are elected. There are two Student Council elections each year--1 in December and another in April. At each election, 5 new students are elected onto the council. Those first-years serve exactly 1 year on the council, before being replaced by a new set of first-years the following year. Basically, the student council in 1st semester is composed entirely of second-years, 5 who were elected the previous December, and then 5 who were elected in April. In December, an election is held to replace 5 of the second years. It was this election that I participated in.

To further complicate the process, the race for the 5 seats is not a straight race--each seat is reserved for a specific region. The North Americans get one seat, the Europeans another, the Africans, and so on and so forth. Of course, this division isn't perfect--there are more North Americans than any other region. All the same, I ran as a North American, given it's the region I'm representing. The first thing that happens in the election process is the nominations. Anyone can nominate any first-year to run representing their region. Of course, no surprise, usually the majority of the first-year class is nominated. The next step is a questionnaire that any nominated candidate can fill out. This stage usually narrows the field of candidates, though, no surprise over 17 of the 27 North Americans chose to run. After the questionnaires were posted for a few days, the first round of votes was held. In this round, three people from each region was picked to continue to the next round. Believe me, it was a nerve-wracking few hours while I waited for the results to come out. Rather fortunately, I was picked to continue on to the next round.The next round contained speeches--each candidate was expected to give a 2 minute speech, followed by two 90 second questions. I was running against two equally competent and impressive people. All of the speeches went really well. My speech was pretty fluent, and most people seemed to like it. After the speeches, another couple of days passed before the actual, final election. On election night, I was on edge! It was really nerve-wracking. When the final result came down the line, I was rather happy. I had been elected to Student Council.

Needless to say, my election to the Council put me in a rather good mood for the remaining week and a half. Although I was very busy for the final week, it just seemed to fly by! Before I knew it, I was flying home. In my next post, I'll start talking about my second semester at UWC!