Life lessons from the field

Semester in the West is coming to an end. We have less than two weeks left in the field before we start driving back to Whitman, then another two weeks at Whitman’s Johnston Wilderness Campus working on our podcasts and final epiphanies. After spending this much time in the field, I’ve learned some important life lessons. So, here’s a brief list of the most important things I’ve learned this semester.

1. Do not, under any circumstances, step on a cactus while wearing fleece booties. And if you do, make sure your first action after spending fifteen minutes painstakingly picking cactus spines out of your feet isn’t to put your bootie back on and then step on another cactus right next to your chair.

2. If you try to make chocolate chip cookie dough without butter or eggs and instead substitute applesauce and vegetable oil, your dough will form a pancake-like substance when cooked on a griddle and will taste mostly like apples with a hint of vanilla.

3. If it’s pouring rain and so windy you can’t set a tent up, your best recourse is to put your stuff under a tarp and have a dance party in a trailer while waiting out the storm. If you choose to do this, having beer and chips for dinner will be far easier than cooking. Traffic flare lights also work really well to illuminate the dance floor.

4. Swimming holes are great for feeling clean, but after the mineral residue in the water dries in your hair, you will still want a real shower.

5. The dedication a group of twenty-one people for doing daily ab workouts is surprisingly high, but will decline in the face of twelve-mile hikes or rainstorms.

6. Putting the internet in “green” mode (as opposed to work-only mode) will result in everyone trying to go on Facebook at the same time and will crash everything for the next half-hour. If you instead leave the internet in work-only mode all semester, everyone will check Facebook surreptitiously at random times, thus preserving the internet for everyone else to use.

7. All-you-can-eat pizza buffets are always a bad idea, no matter how nice the restaurant pretends to be. However, they are indispensible on ten hour driving days.

8. Rattlesnakes command a respect unrivaled by most animals you are likely to encounter in the desert. And even if you think you’ve gotten over your childhood fear of snakes, you’ll still want to keep a good distance.

9. Tolerance for spicy foods can be increased, but only to a point. Don’t order food with red chiles in New Mexico unless you mean business.

10. Beds are a really beautiful and underappreciated thing. And showers, while probably overrated in day-to-day life, are incomparably wonderful after two weeks of strenuous hiking in the desert.