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ground, we’re exhausted. I go into action, firing up the stove, since I’m the only one who knows how to do it except Dennis, whose only advice is to learn to survive in the wilderness already. I’m inwardly cranky at the others for bursting into tears and kvetching about their packs and realize I’m missing a good party in the city tonight. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to come. I’m not sure when I got derailed from that yoga spa idea, doing morning sun salutations on a mountaintop, followed by water aerobics, deep-tissue massage, flirting with fit eco entrepreneurs over organic cuisine, and slipping into high-thread-count sheets at night.
    Gretchen, the pale young recent college graduate, is watching me assemble a wind barrier, pump the gas, and light the stove, and she asks me how it works. We are all tired and hungry, and it would be a hell of a lot easier if I just did it myself, and how could she have signed up for Outward Bound without ever having lit a camp stove anyway? That’s like driving a car without knowing how to change a flat tire, nothing my dad would’ve ever let any of us do. I wipe my face with my bandanna and realize I’m sounding a lot like my
über-competent
dad, here in my brain, and one of the reasons Mom went on Outward Bound was so that shecould learn to light the damn camp stove herself. I turn the stove off, disassemble it, and hand it to Gretchen. I explain it to her step by step, rubbing my mittens together to stay warm, and when she finally lights it and puts a pot of water on to boil, she’s thrilled and gives me a big hug.
    Tina is still sniffling and counting the scratches on her arms when Gretchen and I pour a package of powdered potato soup into the boiling water, which turns the soup bright blue. Tina looks at the soup, the strangest thing, and her tears dissolve into laughter, which makes her tears flow faster. When Bob tells her, “You said you came here to cry,” she laughs even harder. After our neon blue dinner (someone remembers an elementary school experiment where iodine, which we used to purify the spring water, turns potato starch blue), Tina rubs my shoulders for having wrangled the stove, and I relax a little. At least I’m getting a massage.
    It strikes me, as she digs deep into my shoulders, that Tina, Gretchen, and the other women here need an experience like Outward Bound to tap their inner reserves of strength, just as my mother had. They need the confidence that follows overcoming a tough challenge. My parents, on the other hand, raised me to carry a pack in the wilderness without complaining and to be competent in the outdoors and everywhere else. I spent a good part of my childhood playing the home version of Outward Bound. As a result, I’ve never been able to use the charming helpless card with men, to let them feel heroic or even useful, because I can manage almost anything perfectly well on my own. I’m sure I intimidate a lot of men with my competence, and I’m tired, amongsome women, of always being the strong and reliable one (which in my twenties tended to attract some really crazy friends, who always needed to be rescued; it took me years to realize that not only were they draining me, those energy vampires, but that only they could rescue themselves). The last thing I need right now is an experience that’s supposed to teach me to be tougher and more independent, developing my I-can-do-that-myself spirit. I have a strong suspicion, in fact, that those are the very qualities that will be the least helpful in getting me out of my private wilderness.
    It’s easy for me to be a leader in an Outward Bound group. What’s harder is to sit back, let other people make mistakes and figure things out, and be patient while they stumble along. I probably need to spend this week in the outdoors more or less doing the opposite of what everyone else is doing, letting go of responsibility, resisting the urge to do everything myself, bringing up the