Personal Essay - Adventure Writing 101

Adventure Writing 101

A Nonfiction Essay

 Nonfiction Piece

For CRW-320 at UNCW

April 2015

Adventure Writing 101

 Culture Shock

            They took backcountry roads out there. Piled into two white vans, the creative writing students watched out the window as the rural land rolled by. Pinewood forests framed the fields of grass and crops, dotted with small farmhouses, cows and horses. Occasionally a rebel flag hung out from a porch or was pasted to the back of a pickup truck. To the students born and raised in the South, this was normal. To the northerners and westerners, this was culture shock.

            As the vans lumbered down towards the Black River, Tamara smiled. She turned to the other girls sitting in the back.

            “I just got excited, again,” she said.

            Tamara and the other writers emerged from the vans, one by one. They were amateur adventurers, here to kayak up the Black River, looking for thousand-year-old cypress trees.

Adrenaline

Once you take that first step off the platform and onto the ropes course, it’s like the bars have gone down on the rollercoaster car—it’s the point of no return. You have committed. You must go now. You can’t just turn around. Moving backward is difficult. It’s easier to go forward.

I’m about twenty feet off the ground and clipped into the safety harness.

Everyone said, “Push the safety ropes ahead of you.”

I wrapped both hands around the two safety ropes attaching me to the main cable that ran across the first obstacle. I shoved the clips forward, and they zipped ahead of me. I followed them, set on moving. One step, then another. Push the cables. Step forward. Just keep moving. Keep moving.

I slowly made my way across the little bridge. There were three bridges made of wire cables that ran from one side of the course to the middle platform. Between the cables were a checkerboard of two-by-four platforms, but the platforms were spaced farther than my legs could reach. The tension cables were all that secured the boards. They were unstable and wobbled with each step.

Suddenly it happened. My legs began to shake with nerves, convulsing as the bridge wiggled beneath me. My legs always get shaky when I climb things. I love climbing rocky cliffs and indoor rock walls when I have the chance, but even then, my legs get wobbly, weak, and unsteady, like they’re filled with Jell-O.

I froze. My mind was blank, filled only with adrenaline. I told myself to breathe. Inhale. Exhale. It’s okay, I thought. Stay calm. Everything is fine. Inhale. Exhale. I waited until I regained control of my body.

After I passed the wobbling bridge section, I approached a tight wire that connected to the next deck. From that deck, I would be able to rest and decide: do I climb more? Or return down to ground level?

I was almost to the end when my safety ropes stopped moving. I pushed on the ropes, but the metal clips wouldn’t budge. Up until now, they had been sliding along with me. I was only a couple of feet from the end. I remembered seeing someone else with the same problem. They had struggled in this same spot for almost ten minutes. I couldn’t handle the idea of balancing on the thin wire for that long.

“I’m stuck,” I called to those on the second deck.

“You’ve almost got it,” Maddie said, seeing my struggle.

But I couldn’t get my ropes to budge.

Don saw me too and reached out to slide my ropes closer to the deck. I climbed up and transferred my safety cables. I looked across to where I had started. Justine wasn’t behind me like she said she would be. She was nervous and had climbed back down the big rope ladder.

“I’ve done it before,” she told me later. “I don’t know why I couldn’t do it this time.”

I kneeled on the wooden deck and watched M.K. preparing to ride the swing. She was harnessed into some type of pulley system that retracted.

“It feels like it’s pulling me off,” she said.

When she was ready, M.K. scooted to the edge and slid off, dropping straight down, then pulled up and out. She swung back and forth with momentum for a couple of minutes. My heart rate was calming down. I turned to survey the ropes course again.

“You should try that one over there,” Don suggested.

He motioned to three ropes that stretched across ten to twenty feet from where we were, drooping with slack. I didn’t understand how to even attempt it. I looked around the course, considering the other areas, but they were all too intimidating. I had experienced a thrill and was ready to get down. Skipping the swing, I took the zip line back to the ground instead, the speed giving me one last rush.

Ancestors

The wind tips the leaves back and forth, their shiny sides reflect the light, dancing. Pine needles catch the sunrays too and are illuminated, their edges white like ice—frozen fireworks. I hear birds. Crows cawing, gulls squeaking like a dog toy. The sun is warm and the wind is cool. It’s a rare time in North Carolina when the weather is perfect; temperatures stay between 60 and 70 degrees Fahrenheit. It’s spring. Yellow pollen clings to all exposed surfaces, colorful dust like crushed pastels.

I wonder if this weather will continue tomorrow. I worry about being cold on the water and in the shade. I’m excited but anxious. I’m not used to doing this sort of thing with this kind of group. When I lived in Maui, my friends and I went on adventurous outings all the time. Hiking Iao Valley, climbing Haleakala, wandering between the redwoods of Poli Poli. I did a bit of stand-up paddle boarding and kayaking too out there. And I kayaked around Rodanthe on the Outer Banks of North Carolina the year before. But those were different. I didn’t have to worry about other people. Tomorrow there will be over a dozen of us, all on different experience levels.

I hope, at the very least, that tomorrow will be a bonding experience. I want to get to know my classmates better. In Hawaii, my friends and I would drink beer on our hikes. We’d walk in a line through tropical forests, passing a joint back and forth, forward to back, and back to front again. We talked story, and tried to make each other laugh, trading the bits of information we had each gathered about the land and the culture of the islands. I miss that comradery with friends in nature.

While living on Maui, I once walked around hillside taro patches with my friend, Andy. His family had been living on the same property for hundreds of years, generation to generation.

Andy pointed to a rock wall. It was old, green, and mossy.

 “That rock wall is probably, like 2,000 years old,” he said.

A piece of native history lying around in his backyard.

The Black River is farther away than my backyard, but it too is filled with history. The oldest trees east of the Rocky Mountains grow in those swamps. The oldest ones are 2,000 years old. Those trees were just saplings starting to grow in wild pre-colonial America, while Andy’s ancestors in the Hawaiian Kingdom began to build rock walls in Kahakuloa Valley.

Rivers

The river flows slowly in this place. It eases its way past the trunks of cypress trees, their wrinkled knees poking above the black glassy water. I hear birds; between their musical chirps, is the hammering of a woodpecker. Sparrows and other small birds flutter away as the bright orange and yellow kayaks meander through, working their way up the Black River.

There were twenty of us, all together. Three guides, plus the teacher and her husband (all expert kayakers), plus 15 students. Some were paddling for the first time ever. The moment we entered the water, I could tell our progress would be slow. Some of the beginners couldn’t get their kayaks to go straight up the river. They zigzagged across, bumping into each other.

As the group took off up the river, I paddled in circles for fun, confident of my ability to catch back up if I fell behind. I dropped toward the back of the group and dipped my paddle back and forth, from one side to the other. I was pushing with leverage, rather than pulling, a tip I picked up from a canoe racer in Hawaii. As I tried to catch up to the group, I noticed Breck trying to straighten out. She was gliding horizontally over the river, right towards me. I tried to paddle faster, turning to avoid her. She panicked, turning to avoid me, and when our faces were a few feet apart, her boat tipped over and she disappeared below the surface.

Lifejacket secured, she immediately popped back up.

“I’m the first one in,” Breck cheered.

She punched a fist high in the air, sending water droplets flying.

Nathan, one of the guides, was there to help her, so I paddled on.

And I was also there later when Will fell in. We found a spot along the river to pull our boats out and have lunch. Will Squires struggled to get in and out of the kayak. I was still on the water when I saw him tumble over.

“How’s the water?” Nathan joked, after making sure Will wasn’t hurt.

“Uh, not good,” Will said. He frowned down at his soaked pants and shoes.

After lunch, our group was defeated. Some of the adventurers tried to boost the group with motivation, but time and energy were against us. We decided to turn around, never reaching the swamp or ancient cypresses.

On the way back, the group divided. Most of the students and guides paddled quickly back to our drop-in spot. A couple of the other guides, along with two dilly-dalliers, Greg, and Don, lingered behind. I found a place between the bookends of the group where I could relax. The day was ending. Soon we would be loading the kayaks back onto the trailer and heading home. I savored the last bit of our trip. It ended sooner than expected.

I carefully pulled my legs out from inside the kayak one at a time and stretched them out on top of the bright orange plastic. I leaned back, feeling the sun warm my clammy skin. Drifting past trees draped in trotlines, I watched birds in the sky and let the smooth current pull me toward my destination.

Adventure

Our class adventures came and went with the passing of another semester. I grew fond of my creative writing class, but with no more adventures to look ahead to, the course was winding to an end.

I hung out with my classmates, talking about our trips.

“I liked doing the ropes course more than I thought I would,” M.K. said. “Not knowing what to expect was intimidating. I completed the zip line, the swing that makes you feel like you’re free falling, and jumped from the telephone pole. I didn’t expect to push myself so much at the beginning of the day.”

“I wish I had pushed myself more,” I told her. “Especially since we didn’t end up reaching our destination kayaking.”

            “But kayaking was also different from the ropes course,” she said. “We weren’t all choosing our own level of difficulty, we were all paddling the same upstream current and we had to keep a pace that everyone could keep up with.”

I hadn’t thought about it like that. She was right. That’s why we had to turn around on the kayaking trip. Not everyone was prepared for that level of difficulty.

Adventure Writing was a class that attracted optimistic writers with a daring spirit. Many of us remained friends even after graduation.

In the end, I got what I wanted: comradery in nature.