Groundhog Day in the Boundary Waters and Expeditionary Learning

David Friedli

High School Principal

Umoⁿhoⁿ Nation Public School

Macy, Nebraska

It took television to help me explain what my summer Outward Bound trip meant.

For the uninitiated, my Outward Bound experience was a 15-day trip into the Boundary Water Wilderness Area which separates the United States and Canada. For 15 days, I wore the same t-shirt, the same shorts, the same socks and the same bug-resistant nylon jacket with a pull-over hood and mosquito netting face covering.

When I bathed, it was in cold, crystal-clear lake water without the aid of soap in order to preserve the environment. I swallowed, rather than spit out, toothpaste and saliva when I brushed. Razor blades didn't touch my face for the duration of the trip.

A canoe experience on the Boundary Waters isn't a difficult thing. Skilled staff who are experienced guides are along on the trip to teach, admonish and encourage. Learning to portage (carry) 75-pound canoes on narrow trails and across rocky out-croppings is something which comes quickly. It is a matter of survival.

In an Outward Bound experience, you learn to do things because you must. Your options are limited. There is no turning back. New skills mean progress. You either get better or you get worse. Deteriorating attitude equals poorer performance.

Looking at a map makes the mission as clear as the water the canoes travel through: the drop site is here, the pull-out spot is there. If you want to go home, you make it to the pull-out. On time.

A typical day on an Outward Bound canoe trip is simple to describe. Wake at 6:00 A.M., take down camp and cook breakfast. Breakfast is usually oatmeal or some other unidentifiable hot cereal made with iodized water. Wash pots and climb into the canoes.

Paddle and portage until noon.

Noon lunch is dried fruit, nuts, crackers or pita bread and a protein source of some kind. Cheese today, peanut butter tomorrow. Cheese the day after that. Peanut butter again. Once in seven days, seven people share a 6" roll of summer sausage.

Every sip of water tastes of the ten drops of iodine that makes it safe enough to drink.

Paddle and portage until late afternoon.

Set up camp. Gather fire wood. Boil water. Make something based on pasta. Wash pots and gather for a group meeting. Go to bed at 9:00 P.M. in tents that smell of bug spray, wood smoke and dirty clothing. Sleep.

Repeat for 15 days.

The replay of the Bill Murray film, "Groundhog Day" two weeks ago on television put the wilderness experience in perspective. In "Groundhog Day", Murray is a television reporter whose life becomes stuck on a snowy day in February, a constant replay of the same day, same stuff.

Day after day.

Murray complains and fights the experience to no avail, until he learns he can't change the events, but he can improve himself. Daily, he begins to do things to improve life--learning to play the piano, helping those less fortunate, discovering what makes him better--rather than simply being content with things as they are.

As he learns the lessons, Murray is at a street corner to save someone from being hit by a car, is ready with a jack and spare when a tire goes flat, and helps feed a hungry, homeless person.

Stuck in sameness, he refuses to remain stagnant, and in the end, he is a better person, as he escapes Groundhog Day to live happily ever after.

It is so because he changes. Grows. Improves. Learns a life of craftsmanship. He steps out of the shadows into the light.

And he learns to love himself and others.

What is it like to be part of Expeditionary Learning/Outward Bound in a school? It’s just a Groundhog Day, day after day.

This is not to say days at an Expeditionary Learning school are boring or completely routine. The opposite is true. Days at an EL school are filled with excitement, challenge, reflection and wonder. Each moment presents a new opportunity to grow and to mature.

But my four years as principal at an EL school has shown me academic success and social improvement has come when staff—and I—made changes in our professional and personal lives. My experience has taught me we change first, and then we can expect change in others.

We are crew, not passengers, in this journey of creating a new community of learning. The structure and routine of our days provides us with stability. We learn from what we have done in the past. And if we are brave, we change, adapt and grow.

It is our willingness to venture into uncharted waters—within ourselves and beyond ourselves—which brings us out of the darkness and into the light, as teachers and as students. As community members. As a family.

Same stuff, different day.

Groundhog Day.

A day for change.