So my journey began. I was with 8 other college freshman. We traveled to the Northern woods of Minnesota. (A 7 hour van ride is a great way to get to know each other quickly by the way). Our first leg of the GAP semester was first backpacking on the Superior Hiking Trail and then canoeing through the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.
We partnered with Voyager Outward Bound School to complete the first phase of our Gap semester. Before we left home-place, they taught us everything we needed to know about the right way to pack our backpacks, how to set up our tarps we would be sleeping under, and how to “turtle” our rain gear to save space. I was excited to begin hiking, until I found out that these backpacks weighed 70 pounds…
We set out on the Superior Hiking Trail, a beautiful area where the leaves were just beginning to show their fall colors.
Each and every day presented a new challenge to overcome. I learned that comfort zones must be expanded through the discomfort of new situations. Our VOBS instructors coached us throughout our expedition, slowly handing us the reins to take the lead. We learned survival skills like fire-building, knot tying and navigation.
One big challenge that I was not expecting to encounter was being homesick. It was a homesick not for a place, but rather for a feeling of belonging and familiarity. Luckily, many of the other Gap students could relate to this feeling, and we were able to form connections to each other in order to feel comfortable enough to talk about it and overcome it with each others’ guidance.
I got really close with the other students I had met just days before, being with them nonstop for a week probably contributed to that (as well as not showing for that time as well). By the end of our 7 day expedition of logging 40+ miles hiked, we had only begun a semesters worth of memories and time spent together, but surviving in the woods together forced us to form a close community in order to thrive.
my lil adventures 
After this experience, would you recommend it to other students? What was the hardest camping skill you mastered?
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Personally, I had a difficult time navigating with the maps on the hiking trail, and using that to manage our time. After a few tries I finally understood the map and how to use geographical markers to determine location. Calculating our groups speed and distance was something new I learned as well that was challenging for me to master. We did this at the beginning and end of everyday in order to determine when and where to stop for lunch and what campsite was the most realistic to reach based on how long we calculated it would take us to get there. However, during hiking, I not only mastered camping skills, but also other skills that revolve around being in a team which I would say were equally as challenging. I do not think that I would have learned these skills in a traditional classroom, so I would highly recommend to other students who are looking for a program to have a different transition into the next step in life!
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