On July 27 of this summer, I went with a crew from my scout troop to the Philmont Scout Ranch, a high-adventure backpacking-focused scout camp in the mountains of northern New Mexico. We backpacked there for six days and five nights, and we hiked over 35 miles. Although this was my sixth backpacking trip, it was like nothing else I had been on so far. This trip was hardest I had been on by far, and it taught me more about myself than any other.
This trip was in the works for over a year, and three months before we were scheduled to leave, we began intensive physical and intellectual preparation. We met every Saturday at a local staircase with over 200 steps, and then we hiked up and down the staircase while carrying a quarter of our body weight in our packs. We watched many online informational seminars together, and practiced with essential camp equipment such as stoves and rain covers until everyone mastered them. We simply could not risk that our skills wavered when any poorly-done procedure at camp could risk our health.
One eye-opening fact about this trip was just how subtle the best moments of the trip were. When we were choosing the itinerary a few months before the trip, I and most of the others focused on the scheduled activities that we would participate in at the various backcountry camps. We chose our itinerary for its rock climbing and horseback riding, but we didn’t even consider what ultimately turned out to be its most memorable experience: summiting Philmont’s most famous peak, the Tooth of Time. I will never forget the beauty of the progression of views on that hike. Along the trail, we would get snippets of the ultimate view from the top, and after a climactic rock scramble to get to the top, we got the full 360 degree panoramic view of every snippet we had seen so far and so much more. It truly felt like we had conquered something significant that day. When we got back to base camp after the end of the hike, we would often look back at the towering Tooth of Time and wonder, amazed by the fact that we had just been up there a few days prior.
On the trip, I experienced an extraordinary personal development. The sheer physical difficulty of each day shredded off any protective layers between my personality and my behavior. I had to find ways to act cooperatively and productively with others, even if I was beyond exhausted and it was pouring rain. I had to make my actions instinctive; there was usually no one telling me to work harder or even to set expectations. My fellow senior scouts and I had to do that ourselves. This didn’t seem to be so bad at first, until it was 4:30 in the morning, our set wake up time. I had to find my own will to get out of my comfortable sleeping bag and step into the cold night to begin taking down camp. It was moments like these that forced me to search deep for my true sources of motivation. There were no parents to push me; instead, I always focused on being better than the previous day.
People sometimes wonder why we would go on these treks if they were so difficult. But I found that the trip’s difficulty was actually its greatest asset. Firstly, the intensity of the each day instantly broke me out of my increasingly stale summer schedule and made me feel far more “alive”. I hit every edge case of my behavior within hours, and I had more to reflect on in a day than I do in a normal week. My opinions of the trip changed every day, often dramatically. When setting out on the trek our advisor told us the legend that anyone who looked back at the arrowhead rock landmark while leaving Philmont would be destined to return. At that time, I wondered why anyone would bother to remember such a detail. But by the end of the trip, after countless mistakes, reflections, and improvements, my sentiment had changed. As the bus was leaving, I made sure to stare at that rock craning my head to see it until it dropped out of sight.
