Letting down your Guard to find your way

I am a volunteer instructor for a navigation class with the Mountaineers.

What does that statement bring to your mind? I am an instructor for a navigation class. I must know my stuff. I always know where I am in the wilderness. I can read a map like a novel and manipulate a compass like a tearful toddler manipulates his mother in the candy aisle.

But that is not true and just a few short years ago although I took a map & compass with me on hikes, I usually left them in my pack. Both spoke a foreign language to me. A language where I wasn't even sure if I could ask for the bathroom.

I had taken navigation when I climbed Mt St Helens the 1st time. But it never seemed to sink in, it was just so weird looking. Words like topography, declination, bearing, UTM, northing, and easting made my eyes glaze over. And besides (as I justified my ignorance) I wasn't a leader - I was a follower.

Then I became a leader and navigation still seemed beyond my comprehension. After taking navigation seminars through different organizations, the compass still seemed like a mystical talisman. I even misled a hiking group in the steppe around Yakima, WA. How do you get lost on your way to the biggest hill in the middle of a plain? I mean really!

I decided to try one more time at a navigation class. I needed to take the Mountaineers navigation course, not to lead but to take the scramble course. I walked out of the workshop with mostly the right answers - something had stuck. But I was positive that my skills were so shaky, I was going to get lost out in the woods. But then something clicked. Halfway down the hill on my final exercise, I learned to trust not only my compass, but myself. I could do this. And then I realized, I could help other do this too.

So why am I telling you this story? Especially in relation to my first statement?

Because we all expect our teachers to be smarter than we are and that can sometimes be intimidating. And I learned a valuable lesson about vulnerability, relationships, and education in class recently.

I was busily helping navigation students with their exercises in the workshop portion of the class. The section of the course where we routinely throw around all those bizarre and foreign sounding words. One of my student went to the bathroom and when she came back I looked onto her tear filled eyes and saw the same apprehension I had felt just a few years before.

I decided to slow down my instruction and focused on her and another student that was struggling while my partner worked with the other students at the table (one of which was an orienteer and should have teaching the class herself). She was flustered and I let her slow down even more. At the end of the class, I related to her the same story I just told you. She looked up at me, smiled and thanked me. My story made her feel a little better. But better than that, she was ready to head to the field trip portion of the class to build her skills more.

As I write this, she is on her field trip portion. I envision a young woman gaining confidence with each step through the woods knowing that she can do this. That she can stay found.