Growing up with immigrant parents was a curse and a blessing. I was never given opportunities by my parents to explore the world because they would always be working their butt off to keep me above the water. But I had independence and a lot of it. As I got older, I knew exactly what I had to do in terms of helping myself become a greater individual. So I enrolled in Summer Search.
Summer Search is a non-profit organization designed to help low-income students become leaders by sending them on academic trips their sophomore and junior years of high school. Students are also assigned a mentor where they are required to keep weekly contact (shoutouts to Casey Petitt—I will see you soon, I promise!). This program changed my life. It made me the person I am today, and I am extremely grateful for Summer Search. One moment changed my entire outlook on life and that was my academic trip during my sophomore summer.
Long story short, I spent four weeks backpacking and hiking up and down the Wind River Range of Wyoming, with NOLS (National Outdoor Leadership School). But this was not your average hiking expedition. The trip consisted of me carrying a 55-pound backpack up and down the terrain of the Wyoming wilderness. I carried my food, my tent, my sleeping bag, and basically everything I needed to survive these four weeks. Oh, and I carried the bear spray.
Those four weeks were the toughest weeks of my life. No cell phone, thousands of miles away from home, no fast food, well, no good food in general. We had to cook everything from scratch and that, too, was bittersweet. Let’s just say I wasn’t the best cook alive. The worst part was the absence of showers and toilets. Use your imagination on what I had to do. I’ll help you out: river rocks and lots of shoveling.
But the wilderness trip changed my life. It allowed me to experience things that I would have never experienced in my lifetime as a low-income, urban city kid. I hiked a peak 18,000 feet above sea level and saw glaciers. I swam (not really, I can’t swim) in glacier water. I sled down a snow mountain on my butt. I also watched my friend do 720 front flips down a snow mountain (Yes, Gianna, I’m talking about you). I cooked food for the first time without burning anything.
The trip gave me a new love for nature. I never knew how beautiful untouched nature really was until I got to Wyoming. The trees smelled different and the grass was greener. The mosquitoes were more ferocious, but that’s a whole another story. I remembered going on Tumblr and just seeing all the beautiful nature pictures and thinking to myself, “Damn, I wish I could see that with my own eyes." And I did.
It taught me how to be a leader in my life. I was able to lead my group in expeditions with little trouble. I was able to reflect on my actions in the past as well as plan for the future. When you spend hours and hours of hiking, you are able to really relax and think about life. There aren’t any distractions or responsibilities anymore. It was just wake up, cook, hike, and set up camp. Rinse and repeat.
But lastly, the wilderness trip taught me the most important lesson I could learn. And that was to stay positive, open-minded, and relaxed at all times, even when it starts pouring in the middle of setting up tents (it’s a proven fact that wilderness rain is 10 times colder) or even when your food falls off the skillet and you have to eat dirt hash browns for the day. Trust me, that was not fun at all. But it was what I needed to do to survive and have energy for the hike. The trip pushed me to use the bare minimum and made me really grateful for what I had, even though I didn’t really have much back home.
I spent those four weeks of my summer with nine other urban city kids from Boston, California, and Washington. And three instructors. It was the best time of my life, and it was the worst time of my life. I came out a better person and a stronger-minded individual. Would I do it all over again?
In a heartbeat. No hesitation.
