larry Gassan - 3/18/09
Hurricane Island (Legacy Outward Bound School)
H37: August 1971
I was admitted to Outward Bound as a probationary candidate. The normal minimum was 16-1/2, but my 16th birthday was 3 days before the end of the course. My dad was not enjoying watching me do drugs and becoming another social parasite. I knew I needed it, and agreed.
The ferry left Rockland in the fog. I was standing on the deck in leather street shoes, slippery on the steel plate. Pulling into Hurricane, we were met with our first surprise of many surprises. The instructors counted us off into our respective watches, and told us to find our tents. PT in 45 minutes. Fetch!
Thus began 26 days of basic training. Every day was an uncomfortable discovery where embedded beliefs and personal mythologies collided with the requirements of teamwork and new skills. Outward Bound found your faults with unerring accuracy. Physically buff but socially abrasive? Socially coordinated but with the muscle index of a zucchini? Self-righteous? Apathetic? You got served. We all got served.
in the beginning, Jones Watch couldn't show up on time to save our lives. Our instructor Fred Beames got fed up with tardiness. He ordered us to link up by our monkey-lines. We did everything connected except shower. All went sort-of-well until the first lunch call.
It began to make a point. Jones Watch started to pull it together. To our amazement, other watches were not the golden children we thought they were. Different leadership was rotated in, and the internal dynamics changed. Everybody got to make mistakes, and maybe learn from it.
Outward Bound taught me that everybody has at least one necessary skill, somewhere, in an unlikely place. It also taught me that being a social parasite was not a sustainable life-option.
Outward Bound also connected me to my ancestors who'd gone to sea, and come back. It plugged me into what I now know as my core values, which are not defined by narrow sectarian, political, ideological categories.
One of our national mythologies touts rugged self-reliance. Some of that is true. But it is meaningless without disciplined, informed cooperation. Yes, Fred showed us how to sail, tack, and moor a pulling-boat single-handedly. But all of us went further when we got over ourselves and learned what it took to work together.
