"Our hearts are our amplifiers, we don't need no mic..."

All staff 2011 has come and gone and it was a more somber affair this year than it has been in years past. We found out early in the week that our Florida programs (run out of Scottsmoor and Key Largo) are in danger of closing down come January 1, if we cannot get the support we need to stay afloat.

It was the sound of 30 careers of current Outward Bound instructors, and over 30 years of helping countless at-risk youth and their families coming to a screeching halt. All the sudden, we looked around and wondered if this week would be the last time we were all together. We wondered if we would have jobs January.

Here at Outward Bound in the Southeast, it's not just a job for us. It's a community. It's a way of life. It's an obsessive need to help complete strangers and their families. We shut out our own lives for up to 30 days at a time to help these kids and their families. And the work we do is far from glamorous.

We paddle boats in 100 degree heat and humidity, we get cussed up and down and called every name in the book by these kids. We get very little sleep. We sit in pouring rain for hours most days. We get cranky with our co-instructors. We work 18 hours a day or more for very little money with kids who resent us most of the time. And the entire time, we have organisms actually trying to eat us. (read: mosquitos, fire ants, and no-see-ums)

And we love it. We think we have the best job in the world. Most people think we're crazy.

Hear me out. Take into consideration all those things I just wrote about. If you had to endure all that but got to see what it was like when those clouds open up and it stops raining, you would know why we love our jobs. At some point our kids start caring. They start managing their anger and working together as a group. They put down their fists. They learn what it feels like to have someone care about them unconditionally. They examine their issues, whether it's confidence, or an eating disorder, or a substance abuse issue, or they are breaking laws. They start making plans to make things better at home and at school.

Earlier this year I had a student who had tried to bully me and intimidate me to get his way. It was something he did at home with his mother and it had proved effective in the past. It wouldn't fly with me though, and at one point he was yelling at me, threatening me, and throwing all the gear into the water to intimidate me. I wasn't shocked nor was I unprepared when he tipped our boat over. Once he was in the water, he cooled off and I gave him an empty bucket. I calmly explained that I needed him to bail the water out while I retrieved the gear from the boat. I then asked him to repack in the entire boat and we got back in. At this point he was ready to follow the expectations we had set out and return to the group. This whole thing happened at sundown in the Everglades and nearly resulted in the both of us getting hypothermia. But it was the third and final time he had tried to intimidate instructors. We had held him accountable to his actions and we had been fair with him. But through all of this, he had four instructors who cared about him unconditionally, even when he threatened us. At the end of the course, we had a ceremony for the group and we asked them to share one thing they had learned. This particular student started to say that he had never had anyone stick with him the way we had, and then he was overcome by tears and had to take a step away. The rest of his group offered their support, with pats on the back and arms around his shoulders. It was an amazing sight to behold. For the four instructors, it had been a tough month and we didn't know if what we had experienced with these boys had affected them at all. In that moment, we knew it had indeed.

It's those moments that we experience that keep us hooked, keep us coming back. I joke with my co-instructors, especially new ones who are being broken into Outward Bound that we are "Selfless badasses saving the world." It's recently been brought to my attention that we are not, in fact, superheroes, but I think the rest holds true.

If we are to lose this avenue to do the work that we do, it will be a tragedy. There will always be other avenues to help those who need it, but never in my life have I been surrounded by such selfless badasses. Each one of these instructors gives up so much while they give so much. They will always help out, they always want to make things better for those around them. I feel so privileged every day that I wake up to be surrounded by these people and to have the opportunity to do the work that we do. If this community were to disappear, it would be a huge loss.

If you would like to learn how you can help us, please email me at alexbusack@gmail.com.

Everglades Training 2011

I had a moment today where I realized that my final paddle of the year for the last three years has been the gauntlet in the Everglades. The gauntlet, for those of you who aren't familiar, is the paddle from Highland beach in the Everglades down through Whitewater Bay to our take-out in Coot Bay Pond. Which means two things:

1) My final paddle of the year has been with adults

2) It's a really, really long time to sit in a boat.

On my Glades training we did this trip in 12 hours and 30 minutes. Last year with the army veterans, we did it in 10. A few days ago, it took about 16-18. It doesn't matter how you slice it, it is a LONG paddle. And your butt gets pretty sore during it.

At one point, I turned to my co-trainer Kim, and said "I'm over it." But that was the fatigue talking. I'll never be tired of the Everglades and I'm so pumped to spend my winter there. For me, the Everglades is the site of one of my most epic courses in Outward Bound, it's the place where I learned a ton about myself, and every time I go in there, I am truly closed off from the world for a few days. It's fantastic.

This trip was no exception. It was my first time in the Everglades as a trainer, and it was a really fun role to step into. I not only educated my peers on the various technical skills required and shared my experiences with them, but it was also an opportunity to pump them up for working with our kids in the Glades. And at the end of it, we had truly given them an Outward Bound experience, which is always a plus.

Second hour of the Guantlet as the sun went down.

I love this picture because it looks like a time lapse photo of a pelican coming in for a landing and then taking off again.

Glades Cat #3 taking off down the North River.

Nicky "birthing" a board on our first board-up night.

Paddling on the second night down the North River toward the Chocolate Chip Cookie. Sometimes, most times, all the time, I can't believe this is my office.

Photography from inside the Healy Hammock the next morning. It was one of my favorite days waking up this trip, because Kelley was standing over us saying "Good morning guys! It's a beautiful day in the Everglades!" So cheery. So wonderful.

I will say that one of my moments during this trip was when we were struggling to make it through the Nightmare at night. I was holding onto a mangrove in the stern while Dave was pulling boats through a small channel in the stern. At one point I ripped the mangrove clear out of the Everglades. Badass moment number 532 in this job. I love it.