A Little Help Goes a Long Way

(This post will go on record as my longest, but if you read it when you have five minutes to focus it's worth the time)
On August 21st I'll be heading to the Wallowa mountains in eastern Oregon with a group of Big City Mountaineers volunteers and 6 teenage girls chosen from Portland's Caldera Arts program to go on their first transformative outdoor experience.  These teenage girls will be leaving behind many of the things that they value most, cell phones, music, TV, makeup, boys,  and in most cases their valued peers to go on an outdoor experience geared to give them growth in ways that they likely couldn't imagine.  They take a giant leap of faith, traveling into the unknown outdoor world with strangers to learn about things like bear bagging, cat hole digging (and filling), water purification, and leave no trace practices, but more importantly they'll learn about themselves.

I get asked all the time, "why do you do it?" "...how can you volunteer another whole week of your time?"  Here's my humble attempt at an answer:

How can I not?  I volunteered my time as a camp counselor each high school summer that I was in 4-H, after that I was hooked.  When I was 29 and up to my eyeballs in my corporate job I decided to volunteer a week of my time (I had 3 weeks of vacation a year) and teach fly fishing at the same summer camp that I attended as a kid.  (I think my co-workers thought I was crazy.)  I showed up with 12 donated fly rods, special hand tied flies from a friend, a little candy, hula hoops, donated T-shirts, and tons of energy.  I didn't really know what to expect, but I knew that if I made it fun the rest would just fall into place.

At my first class I had kids from the 4th grade up to 8th grade plus high school counselors to engage.  They looked at me with skepticism, I could sense their thoughts... fly fishing? a girl? no way, this is gonna be a dumb class.  But....then I started talking about the critters under the water, the various stages that they go through prior to hatching (eeewws and yucks filled the air) and then I'd pass around the tied flies having them guess what kind of bug they thought it might be.  They were curious, I moved quickly to the next step.  Fly rods... I taught them the proper way to put them together, that they were called "rods" not "poles", I showed them how to thread the line through the eyes on the rod properly to prevent it from sliding all the way out if you happened to let go as you threaded from one to the other.  And then....I took a deep breath and passed out the rods for them to assemble in teams and I watched.  I watched team work, excitement, laughing, mentoring, etc. it only took 30 minutes into my first volunteer experience and I was the one who was hooked.  By the end of their first class I had all the kids out on the lawn casting with little yarn flies on the end of their line, learning how to use finesse instead of power, learning to feel the rod and listen to the line.  I started to break down their barriers because the girls in the class assumed that I was some she-man and that fly fishing was the dumbest thing they'd ever seen, and the boys assumed that I was a girl so what did I know about fishing and especially fly fishing?

I'm an outdoor apparel/gear designer, but I love fashion too, so once I ditched the fishing garb after class suddenly the girls realized that I was more like them then they had imagined, soon they were asking to borrow my clothes to wear to the camp dances at night, they all wondered about being a "designer" and asked a million questions, and after classes each day when I offered free-time fishing there were always girls there too.  It made me smile.  The boys on the other hand would challenge me to cast at targets to see if I could hit them, and when I did it time and time again they started to be amazed and to trust me.

During the 2nd class all the kids learned to cast at the lake, with the bushes and trees around them.  (I have never in my life untied so many knots and impossible snarls as during that week.)  I learned quickly that they love to compete with each other even in friendly ways, competition was something that spurred them on, so I created two lines, tossed two hula hoops out into the lake and they would race against each other to see who could cast into their yarn fly into the hoop first for a candy prize.  I sat back and watched camaraderie, laughter, and most of all wonder.  (they were amazed at what they could do, and how much fun it was)

During the 3rd class we went to a stocked lake and fished for the first time with real flies and hooks.  People thought I was crazy, how could I do that with 20 kids at a time?  But I had to trust and  empower them to use the tools I had given them.  It was amazing, no one got "hooked" and you could hear the squeals and hollers all around the whole lake whenever anyone got a bite or a small fish on their line.  The smiles that would light up their faces were priceless, and their excitement was contagious.

Each day during free time fishing, (there was no obligation to come to this) I took the kids that showed up on the river fishing.  They would wade in with their socks if needed.  I taught them how to maneuver the rocks, where to look for the fish and... they caught fish!!!  Each day the kids who went would tell the ones who didn't go and the next day there would be more kids.  I was run ragged during those 4 days, but loved every minute of it.

By the last day of camp the boys were pals with me and asking me, "So what other kinds of cool things do you do?" and the girls were thanking me for making a class that they were sure would be boring fun, they said, "We didn't know that girls could do this," and they giggled whenever I told them that boys dig girls who can fish.

I listened proudly to boys tell their fathers about a new kind of fishing that they learned about and ask them if they could get a fly rod too.  I listened when one boy thanked me for all that I had taught him and the time that I had spent with him.  I took a few kids "under my wing," that I could sense needed the extra encouragement and I gave them my "all" knowing how much it might help them in ways totally unrelated to fishing.  The biggest lesson in my volunteer experience was that fishing wasn't really what they learned, it was about so many other things, but the fishing was just a tool to allow those other transformative things to happen.

As I now prepare to embark on another volunteer journey with Big City Mountaineers, I look forward to what I might learn from a week with 6 teenage girls in the wild, and I'm certain it will be about much more than bear bagging, backpacking, and adventure.  I hope that you might take a minute and visit my fundraising site for Big City Mountaineers and consider supporting me in whatever way you can as I strive to reach my goal of raising $1500 to help support getting more kids outside.