Reflecting in Wilderness: What hiking taught me during my first year teaching

Nine months ago, I was running up and down sand dunes in Death Valley National Park, feet sliding out from under me in the loose sand, frantically searching for a composition to photograph at sunset. According to my plan, broken down into 10-minute increments, I should have parked my rental car at N 36 36.330, W 117 06.664 by 2:30 p.m., giving me two hours to hunt for the image that would make the early morning flight worth it. By the time I threw the gear shift into park, swung my pack over my shoulder and took off jogging into the desert, it was 4:00, just 35 minutes before the sun would dip below the horizon.
My flight from D.C. to Vegas had been delayed, a last-minute rental car reservation change cost me nearly an hour, and it took me more than twenty minutes in Walmart to find a fuel canister that would allow me to cook for the week. All of these things were my fault — I could have asked a friendly Walmart employee for help, I shouldn’t have changed rental car companies on the tarmac on the advice of a single caustic Expedia review, and I should have factored potential delays into my plan for the day — but I was in a self-pitying mood and ready to blame anyone but myself.
Cotton-mouthed and exhausted after running nearly two miles and cresting dozens of dunes, I snapped a few shots of a lackluster composition under a dusty orange sunset before plopping down to wallow. I was defeated. Half an hour passed before I was ready to move again, and the desert was deep into twilight.
Trudging back to the car, using GPS to guide me through the rapidly darkening expanse, I asked myself over and over, “Why am I here?” on my exhales. On the inhales, the answer: “I don’t deserve to be here.”
Money was tight — my wife and I were in the middle of the homebuying process in one of the most expensive real estate markets in the country — and I was leaving her all of the housework and chores during a particularly stressful time at her work. My photography trip to Death Valley was a selfish vacation, but, we agreed, I needed it. I was halfway through my first year teaching digital media, and I didn’t think things were going particularly well. Over the past few years, backpacking and landscape photography had become a way for me to process the world around me, so I booked the cheapest flight to the desert that I could find and packed my bags.
Before transitioning into the classroom, I worked for five years as a video communications specialist, broadcast club leader, and occasional international trip chaperone. I was comfortable in my job and people around campus generally seemed to think I was pretty good at making videos that inspired students to apply, community members to give, and the outside world to appreciate what our faculty and student body were accomplishing. Now, partway through the year that I added teaching to my list of duties, I was struggling to balance everything. I was worried I wasn’t giving my students the experience and knowledge they signed up for, I was self-conscious about where I stood among my talented colleagues, and I was being inefficient with my time, overthinking every lesson plan and project design. “I don’t deserve to be here,” I kept thinking.
I’m a romantic and an introvert. I walk into nature seeking answers in solitude to big questions: How can I make a photograph that tells a story about my connection to this landscape? What does it mean to exist as a minuscule being in a massive mountain range? How can I be a happier person? What can I do to overcome my irrational anxieties? I had hoped to gain some answers to the latter two questions while camping and photographing in the desert for a week during winter break, but after one failed sunset shoot, a sinking feeling was setting in and I wasn’t optimistic about my prospects for enlightenment.
Blind luck had a different idea. The circuitous route I chose back to my car led me to a small patch of geometric dry mud tiles amid the field of dunes. When I set my tripod inches from the ground, the tiles appeared to extend forever, into a tiny expanse of infinite possibilities, each crack shooting off in a different direction. When planning the trip weeks earlier, I had hoped to come across a simple little scene like this. I’ll concede that I was desperate for any glimmer of hope, but this had to be a sign — a sign that I was overreacting to the failed photo op and possibly to much more.

I spent 15 minutes photographing the intimate scene as it reflected the deep magenta and blue hues of the twilight sky, then retreated to my campsite. After a dinner of couscous and salmon jerky, I climbed into my tent and resolved to archive my thoughts about the day in my trail journal so I could analyze them after a rejuvenating sleep.

The next morning, after a far less frantic shoot in the same dune field, I opened my journal and marveled at the melodrama of the latest entry. “Today did not go as planned. All I could think was, ‘here we go again.’ But then, just when I was ready to call it quits and lay down in the sand, nature provided. Maybe this is a sign that I need to let go of things that are out of my control,” one section read. Self-indulgent or not, I could feel that writing like this was a valuable exercise. I felt a weight had been lifted off my shoulders — maybe this trip wouldn’t be a waste of time and money after all. And maybe, just maybe, I had been viewing my first few months of teaching through a skewed lens too. “What other secret knowledge could nature impart to me?” I wondered.
Months later, as I planned two more forays into wilderness, I couldn’t shake the memory of that evening in the dunes and my subsequent reflection. This was surely in part because I was still embarrassed by my Chicken Little mentality, but there was something else — that night was a turning point that would put me on a path to feeling good about myself in the classroom. I decided I would need to make a habit of recording my thoughts in nature.
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Thumbing through the notes app on my phone after summer traverses through the Rockies and High Sierra, I see that most of my journal entries have a common theme: ways that hiking and teaching are alike. I wanted to share some, just in case anyone out there also makes sense of the world by way of an 18-inch-wide trail, a majestic mountain range, or a perfect little square of flat ground where you can pitch a tent after a long day of walking.
The view from the summit is worth the climb.
My wife, friend, and I hiked the 73-mile High Sierra Trail this summer. One of the toughest stretches of the trail was a three-mile climb from Hamilton Lake to Precipice Lake that included more than 2,500 feet of elevation gain at the end of an already long day. We were so spent that we started desperately looking for campsites partway up. Whenever one of us wanted to quit for the day, however, someone would say, “Just think of the view from the top,” and we would keep going. We were exhausted by the time we set our packs down at a campsite above the high alpine lake, but we were also in a state of euphoria as we ate dinner and photographed the golden sunset light illuminating the sheer granite wall of Precipice Lake.

There was a point last year when I told my department chair I didn’t think I had what it took to be a good teacher and that I was considering quitting and finding another job as a video producer. He encouraged me to consider three things: (1) My view of myself and how I was doing in the classroom was not necessarily what other people saw. Sure, I had plenty of areas for improvement, but I was also doing some things well; (2) I could quit because I thought I wasn’t a good teacher, but I couldn’t quit because I wasn’t a good teacher. That wasn’t factually correct, at least in his mind; and (3) I didn’t know who I was as an educator yet because I hadn’t been on the trail for long enough. Was there any part of me that wanted to find out what was around the next switchback?
I’m incredibly grateful for this compassionate intervention because, as it turns out, yes, I did want to find out. From that point on, things started to get better. I was excited by what would come next instead of afraid. As I tweaked my lesson plans and experimented with new project designs, I could feel that I was making improvements and my students were getting more and more out of my classes.
I wouldn’t say I reached any kind of summit in my teaching last year, but I did end at a higher elevation than where I started. When I was at my lowest point, the climb seemed near insurmountable, but the view from above was worth the effort.
Shakedown hikes are a must.
Experienced backpackers and thru-hikers always test their gear on shorter “shakedown hikes” before embarking on a long trail. Will this tent survive a windy night above tree line? Is this fleece jacket worth the weight it adds to my pack?
When I set out to teach my first class, an introductory video production course, I hoped to teach my students the filmmaking language, the basics of optics and camera operation, the essentials of documentary filmmaking, how to use professional nonlinear editing software, and everything in between. And all of this in a 12-week trimester. We rushed through content, had to cut out a project for time considerations, and no one produced the work they truly wanted to. This was my first shakedown hike and I made note of pack weight I would leave behind for the next trimester’s journey.

My second-trimester students were treated to a more curated experience — they recorded their footage using a semi-auto mode rather than manual, only learned the bare minimum about optics, and didn’t spend six weeks making a single documentary. Instead, they produced a series of shorter videos and spent more time creating second and third cuts of their projects, which resulted in them feeling more excited about what they had produced. By the third trimester, my students spent nearly every day shooting or editing something — no more lectures or class-long discussions about famous filmmakers’ work. I also took one project off the table and added an emphasis on group critique workshops. Each project now took an extra week or two to complete, but as a whole, my students were creating more technically sound and interesting work than in the previous two trimesters — and they felt good about it.
Content is like pack weight. I can’t possibly fit everything I wish my students could learn into one course just like I can’t fit everything I wish I could have into my backpack. I need a sleeping bag, but do I really need the bulky zero-degree one, or will a lighter 30-degree bag do?
Trail conditions change.
There are certain trails in the Blue Ridge that I’ve hiked a dozen times. Even when I hike the same trail multiple times in a week, there’s always something different each time. Maybe a waterfall is flowing more powerfully because it rained in between visits, or a storm washed out a natural rock bridge forcing a scramble across a new route.
My teaching mentors warned me that every class will have a different dynamic and different needs. Some lessons will connect with one group but not another. Some students will embrace a challenging project and others will approach it timidly.

As a nature photographer, the possibility of new conditions is the reason I keep going back to the same places. Taking this same approach from class to class has kept me from feeling off-guard or overwhelmed when something doesn’t work that had worked in a different class with different students.
One of my goals for this past summer was to plan my courses with as much flexibility as possible. If a lesson isn’t working, is there another way I can present it? If half the class finishes a project a week ahead of time, is there a challenge I can give to these students to keep them engaged while the rest of the group catches up?
Purpose is everything.
I’m an avid backpacker, but you won’t find me in the woods or on a mountain without my camera. My camera, three lenses, two filters, and a tripod add nearly ten pounds to my pack. To ultralight hikers, I’m crazy for carrying that excess weight, but to me, it’s not excess — it’s my reason for being on the trail. I leave a lot of creature comforts, like an extra shirt and half of my sleeping pad, at home to accommodate it. I run stadiums before work every morning and do training hikes on weekends so I can go faster and further to get to places like Precipice Lake or the top of Mount Whitney with my camera gear. Photographing remote locations gives me immense pleasure, so the extra work doesn’t feel like a burden.

When a project is meaningful to a student, they’ll shoulder more weight and go to greater lengths to make that project as good as it can be. My first attempt at teaching video production was too technical. I focused too much on teaching skills and then asking students to demonstrate those skills. “Go shoot an interview with shallow depth of field,” or “include six long shots, eight medium shots, and ten close-ups.” By the third iteration of my intro class, my students were focused on telling stories that were meaningful to them and thinking more about mood and tone than shot types. The videos they created were passionate, and to my delight, still demonstrated skills like creative use of depth of field and varied visuals.
I tried to take this lesson into account when designing a second level video production course for this year. In the class, students will promote positive social change through a YouTube channel they create. They’ll choose a topic to explore for the year like gender equality or environmental conservation, and I’ll choose the format of each video project. They’ll learn skills like how to light a dramatic scene, create animated motion graphics, and design a textured soundscape, but they’ll learn by creating meaningful content they care about.
You have to HYOH.
There’s a saying in the hiking community: “Hike your own hike.” It means there’s no one way to tackle a trail. Some hikers wake up at 5:00 a.m. and do 30-mile days, some sleep in and only put in 12 miles because that’s what works for them. The point is, you won’t finish a long trail if you’re trying to hike like someone you’re not.
As I prepared for my first year teaching, I received tons of great advice from experienced and talented educators. I filled half a Moleskine with ideas for activities, assessments, and projects during new teacher orientation week. Every idea was a little gold nugget and I was determined to melt them all down and make my first class a solid gold bar. I tried nearly every suggestion during the first and second trimesters before realizing that I needed to shut the noise out, just for a bit.
I retooled the course for the third trimester, using only the activity and assessment ideas I felt most comfortable implementing. I also added back in some lessons and projects I had planned before jettisoning them in favor of new ideas in my notebook. For the first time, I felt I had ownership of my curriculum, and as a result, I was a more confident and effective teacher.
I’m by no means suggesting that teachers should cordon themselves off from the outside world. The ideas and knowledge my colleagues have generously shared are invaluable and have helped me reach my students more effectively on numerous occasions. What I am suggesting, however, is that I should have trusted my instincts more instead of trying to rigidly co-opt every idea I could. I’m the subject matter expert after all, and I have some good ideas about how to teach my area of expertise.
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In his book On Trails, Robert Moor quotes from his own journal to describe tough days on the Appalachian Trail: “You skirt down a ridge only to climb it again; you climb a steep peak when there is an obvious route around it; you cross the same stream three times in the course of an hour, for no apparent reason, soaking your feet in the process.” As I embark on year two as a teacher, I’m sure I’ll have to climb many of the same ridges I climbed last year and soak my feet in many of the same streams. But thanks to my time spent in wilderness this past year, and the lessons it taught me about the power of introspection, I’m better equipped to handle whatever challenges are on the horizon.
