We remain in full swing at Adventure Treks. Our twelfth school program of the fall is in the woods. We have two more programs next week. It’s been non-stop since May and I will admit, all of us are excited for November and the chance to take some personal time, but we still have work to do.

On Monday, we received a wonderful letter from a summer 2011 student. She had wanted to break the cheerleader prism from which she felt others viewed her, so she joined us last summer in British Columbia. She did an outstanding job on her trip and this success was wonderfully reinforced by her letter. In it she stated that she has brought back from Adventure Treks a willingness to push herself in every new challenge she entertains. She never wants to miss the most “beautiful view in the world,” and she now realizes that the “beautiful view” comes as a result of the hard work invested in “gaining the summit.” Having already encountered snow in July, bird-sized mosquitoes, huge rapids, and heavy backpacks, our student notes that school challenges she once regarded as insurmountable are now easily overcome with a little perseverance and diligence.

On Tuesday, I used the theme from her letter to welcome 48, 8th graders from Atlanta as they embarked from their bus into the middle of Pisgah Forest, NC. It was a brilliantly sunny and warm day in the midst of perfect fall foliage. Knowing the weather forecast, I prepped them for the imminent adversity they would soon face. 36 hours, almost 2 inches of rain and a 30 degree temperature drop and, we had all the ingredients necessary to strengthen a school community, enhance life-long friendships and build a little resilience! Or we would have 48 cold, miserable, tired and wet children facing the shared worst experience of their lives! These are the times where we know that the leadership of our instructors makes all the difference. This is the time when character counts and a strong personal example makes all the difference.

In retrospect, my greatest learning experiences as a kid were the times which weren’t easy or fun, and things didn’t go as planned. I remember endless portages, sleeping with two inches of water in the bottom of my tent, and bushwhacking up the side of a mountain with no idea where the trail was. All these “disasters” facilitated my current work ethic and character. I hope the experiences we are facilitating today are ones our students will find to be productive down the road.

As a parent, I often find myself wanting to make things always easy and fun for my kids. It’s hard to not want this but I also realize that this is doing them a disservice. How hard to push? When do we pull the plug? (This school group will be spending tomorrow night at a facility with warm showers and lots of hot chocolate –instead of the camp site they were scheduled for.) This is the delicate balance we grapple with as we make decisions with uncertain conditions. It’s what makes Adventure Treks more art than science and the reason we all love what we do.

Thanks for being part of our community. Our 2012 schedule and a new video will be released tomorrow. Look for an email from us with details.

best, Dock

After a demanding but wonderful summer, many people expect that we get a long period of relaxation and personal outdoor time before we begin the challenges of preparing for next summer. While that might make the most sense it couldn’t be further from the truth.

On Tuesday, we opened our 9 week long fall season where we provide outdoor education, community building and science based programs for students from 14 different schools. We had only 8 days to travel across the country, catch up on sleep, download the summer and prep for our new season! Our schools will come from as far away as Florida, Tennessee and Ohio for these 4-5 day programs in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains of Western North Carolina. In just four days, students will rock climb, backpack, hike above 6,000 feet, whitewater raft, play many teambuilding games and learn some of the science behind the natural world in which they will be immersed. Some programs are based out of a summer camp but most students will sleep in tents in Pisgah National Forest.

As a teacher who has worked with us over the past 15 years recently remarked, “I love your summer programs, they are incredible but you generally are already working with students who love to be outside! When you work with schools you reach many kids who, without you, would never get to experience the magic of the outdoors. It’s with these students that you do your most important work!”

Both programs are important and rewarding. It’s great fun sharing Western Carolina with 17 of our summer instructors who have traveled from the West Coast and over 850 students and teachers. Our instructors are currently in the woods with 88 tenth graders from the University School of Nashville, TN. tomorrow they go rafting.

As you return to school and leave the magic of your Adventure Treks summer behind, Think of us here in NC. We are still living outdoors with smiles on our faces. Do know that most every evening through Halloween there will be a plus delta still going on as over 800 students get to experience the magic of AT.

We wish you much success with your new school year. Enjoy the Labor Day weekend. Our thoughts go out to our students in NY, NJ and VT who have weathered Hurricane Irene.

Please stay in touch with us and your many AT friends.

I’m back in Oregon after spending time with the Blue Ridge students in NC. It’s a very busy last week of Adventure Treks. 13 trips have finished and 9 are still out there going strong. making the most of every remaining minute at Adventure Treks. Every student on the Pac NW Experience 2 summited Mt Shasta today matching the 100% set on Mt Shasta by Cal Challenge 3 a few days ago. We are very happy for them. these are the days that forge life long friendships!

When I speak to a group at final “plus delta” as I am doing every night this week, I like to celebrate our students many successes. The most important point I make, however, is imploring them to stay in touch with the great friends they have made on their trip. I am firmly convinced that friends made at “camp” are the best friends you can make. They have been tested through adversity, challenge and shared responsibility. This is personal for me.

As I look back over 51 years, I have been blessed with great friends from all phases of life. My best friends however remain my friends from my boyhood at camp. Friends I camped with, paddled rivers with and jumped off cliffs with 35 years ago.

We try to get together at least once a year. This February, as I surveyed our group of ten skiing at Alta, I was impressed at the level of professional success of my camp friends; from a PHD scientist for NOAA, to a leading surgeon, to the director of Innovation for a Fortune 500 company, to a judge, to a CEO of the nation’s top solar energy company, they have all achieved “success.” I am definitely the slacker in the group.

More important than professional successes, these folks are successful in their personal lives. Everyone is healthy, in good physical condition, married, raising great kids, involved in their communities and…. happy!

Certainly many factors influenced their ability to succeed. At the top of the list is excellent parenting and a good education — everyone has achieved an advanced degree. The interesting thing is … each one of us would say that our most formative (and valuable) experiences were the multiple years we spent at camp. Not school, not sports, not extra-curricular activities.

Like your child did this summer, we learned, developed, and shared outdoor experiences that still bond us. We spent our summer outdoors. We spent our time in small groups, learned how to cook, gained a myriad of outdoor skills, learned personal organization and faced natural consequences. We acquired life skills; we learned to assess risk, to challenge ourselves, to work as a team, to make good decisions, and to look out for others. We learned when to lead and when to follow. Perhaps most importantly, we learned to be comfortable in the face of adversity, and learned to be resilient. These are things not generally taught in a classroom. We spent nights sleeping in the rain, not eating if we couldn’t get a fire going, and portaging our heavy canoes. We explored places that we believed others had never seen. We challenged ourselves and shared the joys of living in a tight community.

My vision for Adventure Treks has been to give others the same indelible experiences I gained through many 8 week summers at camp, but to package it with an intentionality that would facilitate the same results and skills, in much less time. The experience has to match the needs of today’s very busy families and shorter summers. I hope as the summer draws to a close, you and your child will be able to reflect back on his/her Adventure Treks experience and feel it had a tangible effect on positive personal development that will last long beyond the summer experience.

The life skills learned at camp were important, but the most valuable benefits from my camp experience are the friendships which are strong to this day.

Please encourage your child to keep in touch with the friends made on their adventure. I hope 30 years from now, your child will still be going on adventures with friends made at Adventure Treks.

It’s a privilege to get to know these amazing Adventure Treks kids. We LOVE our students! I hope you will be able to meet some of these great kids as well when they get together outside of Adventure Treks!

Greetings from another Delta Jet! I have loved meeting hundreds of students from 11 different trips since I last wrote. I may recount some of these adventures later. I remain incredibly impressed with our Adventure Treks students and instructors this summer. We are having a lot of fun! Who knows summer may have finally come to the Northwest, too! I thought I’d share some observations and thoughts as I enjoy my time with teenagers…

My blackberry has a pull on me that is both seductive and addictive. I have to set firm limits. But I still find myself resisting sneaking a peek when conversing with others. The Smart Phone has fundamentally changed how we run Adventure Treks and that has been good. Believe it or not we used to communicate back and forth by answering machine in the early 90’s. Cell phones were expensive, used only for emergencies (like our use of Sat phones now) and could only reach you within your area code. Back in the “old days” My instructors also needed to know how to read a map (they still do in the backcountry) but one couldn’t plug the destination into the “Tom Tom” in their van and instantly know (with 95% accuracy) reasonable directions, the location of the nearest grocery store for “freshies” and where we could get the most affordable fuel. Putting “expert” information directly in the hands of our instructors has significantly cut down phone calls to the office and our regional directions and let us focus more on serving our students. Instant communication has consistently helped us make better decisions. To this extent, technology is great!

While knowing where the cheapest gas is important especially this summer, I worry about the effect this technology is having on our kids. This generation of kids are “digital natives” which means they never knew a life without the internet. With the rapid change of technology each 3-4 year cohort is growing up with a different digital world view.

As we tried to facilitate “get to know you” conversations between shy 13 year old boys nervously beginning their first AT trip, yesterday, I was not surprised that the first question some were asking each other was “what video games do you play?” (It was already a given that they had all seen Harry Potter) This is a much more frequent question, than students asked each other 5 years ago and a different question then they asked ten years ago.

On the final night on an Adventure Treks trip, we have to be very careful about how we return technology to our students. We strongly discourage them from checking in with their outside friends or checking texts and Facebook until they get to the airport. They can call home and load their AT friends into their address books and Facebook accounts but as soon as they check their messages and email, we have to work hard not to “lose them” as they fight the return to their digital world. I always hate to watch this happen, as I am naturally much more partial to a world where everyone is communicating face to face and this communication is enhanced through immersion in nature.

A typical teenager sends over 3000 texts per month (4000 per teenage girl and 2500 per boy) there’s been a 6% rise in 2010 over 2009. That averages to over 100 texts per day. Voice usage is down and a plurality of teen say the number one reason they own a phone is to text. 43% of teenage girls actually sleep with their phone and many check email and texts in the middle of the night.

Obviously all this texting comes at a cost. It means when texting or checking emails we are probably multi tasking (though this generation can multi task much better than I) which means focus may be drifting from where it’s indented to be. I question whether constant communication by text will affect teens’ ability to communicate when conversations become difficult. I remember communication with my camp friends by letter. Those days are long gone and that is a good thing. Facebook strings keep our AT students connected and in a much better and more current way than the letter did 35 years ago.

A conversation with a nervous girl one opening day in Portland sums up my fear of our reliance on digital communication. “Can I please bring my cell phone on the van with me?” she implored. “No we are cell phone free form this point on,” I said trying not to sound too flip. You have so many wonderful people to meet in the van, I would hate for you to be distracted. These people are going to become some of your best friends. “

“But there are bound to be some awkward silences, the girl responded, when I feel them, I can text a friend from home and then I won’t feel so awkward.”

Are kids still learning to communicate face to face? Are they able to empathize with others and listen to and understand a different point of view? or are they relying on their hand held devices as a digital security blanket. Can teens effectively communicate in 160 character blocks? Are we losing nuance, body language and often the courage to look people in the eyes and reflect back their feelings? These are valid questions but the research has not yet been conducted. In a time of rapid change, we are in a real life experiment and we won’t know the answers until the damage may already been done.

I also worry about video games. Kids are getting softer. We see it in the field. Over the years, we have had to make our backpacks less challenging. It is a generalization but students are not in as good a shape as they were 10 years ago. Data is also coming out beginning to show that excessive video game use affects brain development in adolescent boys and can affect motivation and decision making.

I feel that the Adventure Treks experience is a great antidote. Three weeks away from text messages and electronic games has a soothing effect. Our evening meetings give every student a chance to address issues face to face. There is time to listen, empathize with others and communicate in the same ways we have been for the past ten thousand years. Life immersed in the elements can give real life consequences and thus learning opportunities.

Now our mission is to make the Adventure Treks experience, the best, most relevant and most fun experience in a young person’s life, so that they can see that there are some alternatives in a technology driven world!

Greetings from 30,000 ft. Another red eye… This one from Portland heading home to NC to see my own kids, go rafting with the Blue Ridge Experience students and check in with our office. It’s been an exciting two weeks on the road meeting our incredible Adventure Treks students and helping our instructors open trips and set students up for success. I have visited the Cal Adventure, British Columbia 1, British Columbia 2, Cascades Challenge, Pacific Northwest Experience 1, Leadership Summit and both Alaska trips. Meanwhile our regional directors Ben Mirkin, Niki Gaeta and Stephen Gardiner are supporting trips and getting to know students in their regions.

Summer has come to the West at long last. It seems like high pressure has finally set up and every trip has enjoyed a beautiful last couple of days. Many groups caught some rain (British Columbia 1 and Leadership Summit even got snowed on) in the first few days of their trips but everyone has dried out. Several students have some great “war stories” of the rain and snow they “survived.” It’s experiences like these that build the resilience that kids need. 35 years later, my best memories from camp are of the challenges I faced and pushed through, not the easy times. Challenges successfully overcome, breeds more success.

The snowpack is ridiculous this year. In some places it is 650% of normal for this time of year. We have been busy modifying backpacking routes. Even the back ups to our backup plans didn’t consider 150 year record snow depths. While some of the backpacks may not have been as rigorous as we would have liked, first backpacks are all about building a community and fostering a sense of belonging to something bigger than one’s self. We have a great group of students and they genuinely like and respect each other. The students and instructors have set up a great rapport on every single trip.

Today, I just finished staff orientation with the Alaska 2 and California Challenge 2 instructor teams. Both are very strong teams and they are now scouting their trips and preparing to meet their students next week.
Adventure treks is off to a great start. Thanks for your support! We are doing all in our power to create incredible and indelible experiences for your child. I hope you are enjoying the updates / treks checks. we are enjoying getting to know your child!

Have a great Fourth of July
Best, Dock