Instructing

Don Profesor el Segundo

I recently finished my first course as an instructor for NOLS. It was truly everything I had hoped it would be: from thoroughly enjoying myself to feeling like I had been a large part of a positive transformational experience for several students. After the course was over, I received a paycheck. It was then that I realized I had been working for the past 24 days.

The course was an Outdoor Educator Course in Montana's Beartooth Wilderness. For the most part, this simply means that the 12 students on the course were educators in some capacity and wanted to develop their skills in the outdoors in order to lead groups of their own students on backpacking trips. The students ranged in age from 18 to 52. We spent the first 17 days backpacking while teaching the students everything from how to use their stoves to the NOLS leadership curriculum. We finished the course with 4 days of rock climbing camp, which I found to be one of the highlights as my responsibilities increased for this portion of the trip.

We saw mountain goats, deer, river otters, hummingbirds, and weasels, all through the ever-present cloud of mosquitoes. My camera stopped working a few days into the trip, so my pictures are somewhat limited. I should be getting copies of everyone else's photos in the near future. I love my job!

Lizzie communicating with Don Profesor


Emily at Upper Sky Lake


Margaret, Kelly, Ava, and Sarah