My Bathroom Revelation

This is a journey entry I wrote the first night of training while in the field.


7 January, 2010 – Halfway between Rustler’s and Jackson

Our meeting started out in the Conference room of the RCA offices. I showed up just on time as people were sitting in a circle around a bunch of African drums. I was extremely relieved to have shown on time. I didn’t want to blow my shot. This morning in the shower I looked at my watch and somehow thought of the date. I knew yesterday was the 6th because I wrote it on my tip tally. For some reason I thought I had until tomorrow, Friday, to get to Enterprise. I shouted, ‘Oh no!’ and started toweling off as fast as possible. ‘Walker, I screwed up!’ I quickly dressed and got my things to the car. ‘Can you cover me Walker? I open on grill…’ I started the car, wrote Kelly the manager a note, and headed for the gas station. I hadn’t yet filled since retrieving the Walkers from St George. I saved the receipt to hopefully be reimbursed later. 5 miles down the road I thought I ought to call someone letting them know I was going to be late. I looked for my folder of paperwork. It wasn’t in my bag – not in the hatch… Freak! Back to the lodge.

I sped the whole way – passing two sheriffs along the way. I left at 7:4 and walked in the RCA doors at 10:05. Dang good time.

We were encouraged to play around with the drums for a bit on our own. Then we were brought together and played as a group. A man they called Lynx pounded out the heartbeat and the group followed along. The idea was learning to live together in harmony. Of the four beats in a measure, the first two represented the heart beat. Much like we are drawn to our Mother’s when we are an infant; beats one and two serve as the unifier. Once we pay homage to the heart beat then we have beats three and four to do our own variation. Doc. Dan, the clinical director, then explained that this next week of training was to see if we could follow the heart beat of RCA.

Lynx then pulled out a dry erase marker and took his place at the white board. He talked about the different ‘Ego-States’ that each person goes through. Of the 7 identified, only one is desirable – that of ‘Adult.’

After an hour or so of instruction, we were asked to fill out some paper work, take a urine test, and asked to pull out our stuff and start prepping for takeoff. Lila, AKA ‘Silent Sage,’ showed us how to pack a survival pack and set us free to do our own. I pulled my stuff out of my car and tied the saddest looking survival pack ever. I realized that I had forgotten my enamel ware cup in the kitchen sink back at the lodge, and had to scramble to get them to sell me a cooking pot before we left. We loaded up in the Suburban and put on our blindfolds. Students don’t need to know where they’re going. And at this moment – we were students.

After about an hour of driving, we pulled up to a place Sage called ‘Outpost.’ We took off our blindfolds and pulled our packs down from the rack on top. Outpost apparently was used for special occasions such as graduation. It had a fire pit and a few buildings with grass roof tops. We did a little more prep work and then hit the trail. Throughout the hike Safe would call out, ‘half quart.’ This meant that we had to show staff that we had half a quart, drink it, and then show it again to prove that we had drank the water. ‘Get a buddy and make sure they down half a quart.’

We only put in two or three miles that day. We stopped twice for breaks, ‘Half Quart! Along the way we learned names.
(Here are some notes I wrote down to help me remember who is who…)
Matt – Tall and bald. Super athletic.
Tim –
Caleb – BYU grad, former RCA employee, Earth name ‘Crow.’
Laura – Wild, outspoken, former wilderness worker
Kathy – Older woman
Emily – Sweet, soft spoken, almost cute.
Lila – AKA ‘Sage’ – Almost five years with RCA

About 6:30 we broke hike. (I’m not sure why I wrote it this way – but apparently ‘broke hike’ meant that we stopped hiking…) We had to half circle around Sage and do a chant. I was number one, so I started. “Trainees! Count off!” ‘One’ ‘Two’ ‘Three’ ‘Four’ ‘Five’ ‘Six’ ‘Seven.’ All together – “Trainees!” Sage’s response was, ‘That was pathetic. Try again.’ On the third time counting off we were loud enough to satisfy Sage. We were allowed to drop our bags and pull out our leather gloves for camp chores.

We were put to work digging holes, gathering wood, setting up a place to sleep, etc. We were allowed two cuts with a saw to make our digging sticks. After what seemed like three hours of digging we had a pit large enough. Sage started a coal and Caleb got us a roaring fire. I hauled in a few dead trees for firewood and for sitting. As I passed one of the guys their comment was, ‘Wow, looks like #1 has been busy!” We were asked to gather around the fire with our journals, water, and food. “Write the date, location, how many miles we hiked, and a page about whatever you want. Then on the backside write a half a page about a goal, and then a poem on the bottom half.”

I’m still writing… Everyone else was done and kinda waiting. “Are you waiting on me” Yup. “Oh, well I could write forever – can I finish up later?” The next thing to do was to wash up. Face, feet, hands. Sage pulled out a bag of small pellets that dissolved into toweletts. “Wash your face, check it off. And then your feet.”

We had to heat more water for our hands so I took the time to keep writing.


Goal:
The ultimate goal is Exaltation. However, a subgoal that I would like to work on throughout this week involves hard skills of camping/survival.
- Survival Pack – Accessible, Balance, Compact, Streamline
- Fires – Collecting fire equipment, proper use
- Overall Organization and sense of place/purpose

Poem
Gazing up into the Sky
I take the time to…
Admiring her beauty…

(Maybe some day I'll come back and finish this poem...)