View of West Bond, photo from Flickr.Experiential Learning is not only about planned experiences but also making the most of unplanned moments. I've heard these unplanned moments called 'Teachable Moments' and I think today was full of them for several groups.
First we had Gilmans Corner making a good call to slow down, now I hear from another group that is pouring on the speed!
Clay is a great guy who is a hiker and does a lot of graphic design work for the school. He is a very skilled photographer as well and has been trying for a few years to get good pictures from the SophX. This year he hiked in at the crack of dawn to catch up to the Wilderness group and take pictures of them crossing the Bonds.
It turns out (even though he started at 5am and hiked very quickly with no pack) that the Wilderness group had been up and out early, and stayed ahead of him the whole day and as a result he never ran into them! This is pretty remarkable as getting up and out with a group of students can sometimes be pretty challenging.
This means the group is functioning well, probably progressing into the Main or Final phase already!
Luckily the Zealand group was also coming over the Bonds from the other direction. So Clay was able to get some pictures and check in with this group as well. They were looking good he reports, though a little tired in the early afternoon.
The mountains can teach us many things: an early start and quick feet mean rest in camp, sometimes the mountains are bigger than we can handle and we need to readjust our plans, often if we listen to the wild we can learn what it has to teach.
These are just some of the teachable moments that I think came up today.
3 comments:
So which group called in to say they are speeding up?
Well they didn't call in, but it was the Wilderness group. I know they are on their planned route because we had an agreement they would call in two nights ago if they weren't going to be on track to see Clay (the photographer).
They didn't call so I told Clay he would see them. At 9am Clay was on the summit of the Bondcliffs and they had already been there and were continuing north on their planned route.
That's a very early start and a fast group!
Thanks!
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