pilgrimage

I'm getting really excited for my NOLS course! We leave next week. A week from today, I'll be packing up, and maybe even already on the road to the trailhead for 18 days of backpacking, and 4 days of rock climbing.

I just got an email from one of our admissions officers with one parent's description of his feelings about a NOLS course after his 14 year old took a course this summer:

A NOLS trip is not a tour. A NOLS trip is like a pilgrimage. On a tour as a tourist, you only experience something new. On a pilgrimage, as a pilgrim you become someone new. Pilgrimages take you somewhere to a transformed life. That’s what NOLS does. It takes people somewhere to a transformed life.

The course I'll be taking is focused for outdoor educators, so I'll be traveling with people who either work in the outdoors, want to, or want a deeper experience with the leadership curriculum.

I'm excited to get outside, I'm also really excited to get out of the office. For a month. Especially now that the 2010 catalog is done. Or at least it will be by the end of the week.

Oh, the press check? Yeah. That. It was long, somewhat painful, and a bit brutal. But it was grand. What matters most is that it's over.