Alumni Chats: Sarah Hutson
It’s been several years since my summers at Wilderness, first as a camper, then as a swamper, then as a maintenance and construction base staffer and finally as a canoe guide.
It is sometimes difficult for me to describe what camp taught me to people who haven’t been to Wilderness or another tripping camp. What, they think, could a couple summers canoeing in the Boundary Waters have to do with so-called “real life?” But the lessons I learned during my summers at WCB have stuck with me and inspired me in many non-outdoor situations over the years: Knowing that I’m capable- whether it’s lifting a canoe or leading a project or solo traveling in a foreign country. Leadership and negotiation. Patience. Joy in both community and solitude. But most of all- adaptability and a long-term outlook in the face of uncertainty. The last is the one I find myself remembering most right now.
There is a reading by a former WCB staffer, Peter Ramey, called “Know as you go.” It was read to me by my first guide on a canoe trip and as a guide I read it to every camper as a last word during our trip. It’s about navigating through lakes where everything looks the same and the need to live in the moment and trust that the map is correct and the “mapmaker” knows the way, both on trail and in life.
Of course, (with respect to the author of the original piece) there are also times on trail and on base when it’s not so easy to be in the moment. Times when the portage is marked slightly off, or the map is unreadable due to age. Or times when the unexpected forces you to change plans suddenly, whether it’s a storm, an injury or another emergency. And these uncertain times also taught me a lot about dealing with a crisis. Don’t panic, breathe and say a prayer, evaluate what you do know, use the tools you have to make your best bet and test it, reevaluate, and don’t give up until you succeed.
One these “unknown” or “missing map” scenarios came for me in 2006 and 2007 during the Cavity Lake and Ham Lake Fires. In 2006, fires burned less than a mile from camp, and the smoke blotted out the sun. Several of my fellow staff members worked through the night to install fire suppression systems on base and paddled out to observe fires on Three Mile Island. I went out on a canoe trip with a group and returned to find that camp had been evacuated to Grand Marais. Then the next year, the Ham Lake Fire raged through camp. I remember feeling in the summer of 2007 a very similar feeling to what I am feeling right now during quarantine. A lot of my bedrock assumptions were shattered: that camp- the buildings, the institution- would always be the same. As staff we dealt collectively with profound grief for what was lost as we sifted through the ashes that summer. But there was more to the story. The community came together with donations, alumni and churches returned to volunteer, and we made it work with the buildings and resources we had to continue sending campers on canoe trips. The next summer we started rebuilding. I have heard stories of similar hard times from other past fires and the blowdown in 1999, and the lesson is consistent: It was not an easy time emotionally, physically or financially. But as a community we pulled through.
Today we are all without a map in the uncertain, scary times of Covid-19 and quarantine. Some people are rushing into danger to help others. Some are reeling from job losses, closures and other upheavals. Others are full of grief and anxiety because the foundations of the world as we know it are being shaken and we don’t know what’s next. And once again, I find myself returning to the lessons I learned at Wilderness. First, practice calm in the face of uncertainty. Trust in God and yourself. And even though we can’t see very far ahead right now, we can take comfort in knowing we have survived hard times in the past. We just have to support each other and know as we go.
Written by Sarah Hutson
Swamper 2006, Maintenance 2007, Construction 2008, Guide 2010-2011
Know as you Go
by Peter Ramey (WCB alumni ’01)
When you’re out on a lake, navigational landmarks such as islands, bays and peninsulas that are shown quite clearly on the map run together so as to appear indistinguishable. What you are paddling towards may look nothing like the inlet that will lead toward the desired portage, but more like a single, solid shoreline. This flusters the dickens out of my fellow travelers as each take their turn with the map and compass, acting as navigator for the group. “We’re going the wrong way,” one repeatedly complained to me once. “There’s supposed to be a bay up here to our left, but its just a wall of trees!” It wasn’t until we were almost on top of the trees themselves that, as if by magic, the bay opened up before us. We sailed right on through, continuing our route, exactly as the map had predicted.
These lakes are like that. Islands, narrow channels, points and peninsulas emerge out of thin air, disentangling themselves from the wooded mass as you approach. It fills one with both wonder and exasperation; it confounds while at the same time giving rise to a sense that the land is alive with you, a labyrinth.
Despite the confusion when seen from a distance, the navigator always comprehends when it is finally necessary, and the hills open up just in the nick of time for the canoes to slide through, and the anxious map-reader is flooded with relief. As much as the camper may absolutely insist that the map is wrong, in the end the map is right every time.
To avoid the anxiety that accompanies the feeling of lostness, I hammer into the heads of my fellow travelers a maxim that by the end of the trip is almost a mantra: Know as You Go. Know as you go means understanding that what knowledge you want you will know when you need to, and that all you must do is continue heading in the direction your compass tells you is right. It is knowing that the future will unfold into the present, allowing you to recognize your position then as you do now.
Knowing as they go, my fellow travelers are relieved of the worries of what has not yet come, and are thus freed to enjoy the loveliness of the place they are at. All that is required of them is to keep moving forward. Should they stop all forward motion, the land likewise stops its self-disclosure and remains and ambiguous lump of green.
The lesson by now is obvious. In our own lives we so often give way to a crushing anxiety over the future’s uncertainty. We feel better when everything is lined up cleanly and neatly- our college plans while still in high school, our jobs while still in college and so on. We want to see everything ahead of us before we get there. Yet none of this can we ultimately determine anyway. It will unfold in its own good time. All we must do is live fully in the present, which is all we are given to live in anyway. But we must always keep moving forward. Make plans, dream dreams, theorize and construct possibilities, knowing always that the future is bigger than our minds can make it, that what we see now is only a small segment of the map, and remembering that the mapmaker knows the way, and that is enough.
Know as you go.