Education.
Adventure.
Culture.
Here, they all come together.
All, I’d like to point you to my alternate blog http://rei-stonexl.tumblr.com/ and suggest you start following it! I’m spending most of my time on that project now. The blog details events surrounding the Keystone XL pipeline while attempting to build intersectionality between environmental and other social/economic issues.
Visit our website at http://www.pipetechamericas.com/
At Goonsquad 2013 you’ll find the:
To fit all your surplus value needs!
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Abstract
Industry insights to providing quality wilderness risk management are growing, and with them, advocacy for wilderness medical training. This study reports on the relationship between the medical training and response experience of backcountry expedition members and their ability to adapt during their expedition. As backcountry-specific medical training has become increasingly important for expedition members, this study seeks out how member confidence in new situations, endurance under hardship, comfort during response to demands, anxiety during expedition, and willingness to participate during expedition is affected by medical training. After reviewing that data, I conclude that medical training and response experience does influence the overall adaptability of expedition members. Furthermore, as the level of medical training and response experience presents as more extensive, adaptability increases. Based on the evidence presented in this study, a compelling argument can be made for the provision of more extensive medical training which serves member’s leadership proficiency as well as their response expertise.
Keywords: adaptability, medicine, medical training, expedition
Earlier this morning I’ve closed the survey and begun analyzing the results. I received a total of 44 responses over the course of about 3 weeks. First Aiders, First Responders, EMTs, Nurses, and technical rescue technicians were all a part of aiding in the data. Thank you to all who participated! A formal report on the results will be uploaded later this week with the finished study to be uploaded before the holiday season.
Thank you again for all your support!
Hey all! I’m doing research on the title topic, listed above. If you’ve been on a wilderness expedition, please fill this out! Forward it to anyone you know if applicable!
As of Sunday, October 14th, I have served in the Massachusetts Air National Guard, 104th Fighter Wing, Civil Engineering Emergency Management CBRNE Defense for six years and am to do so no longer.
For as long as it is available, please keep up with this column written by The Political Notebook.
I’ve ended my Air Force career as a Staff Sergeant at the age of 23, having achieved much and endured even more. I am proud of my personal accomplishments, but not of what my efforts ultimately served. In other news, I will be posting the beginnings of my research on “The relationship between visitor medical training and attitudes about rescue service provision in American parks”. Be well, all.
The late summer season beat down hard on western Maine, heating the rocks and the air around Weld’s Mt. Tumbledown. Now, I didn’t particularly like that, but standing on one toe hundreds of feet in the air means I also didn’t much care. Not only was I in my own windy stretch zone, but I was climbing with Mac McInnes - a legend of experiential education and adventure therapy (How many people can say they’ve met Kurt Hahn?). I’d be damned if I wouldn’t learn a thing or two. It was the second pitch of Mt. Tumbledown’s AMC Route (http://www.mountainproject.com/v/amc-route/106505313) and why was I up there?
The feature of this piece is not to talk about what I learned, those lessons are part my own reflections and another part my own experiences. The feature, instead, is to talk about the value of adventure for professional development. Why should you, adventure educator, meat packer, or urban fashion designer, set aside time to venture deep into the unknown?
To begin, when speaking of adventure, there seems at times more agreement resides outside the adventure educator profession of what it means than within the practicing community. At most vague, it means engaging in challenges with the unknown. At most specific, we’re talking about wilderness recreational sport activites and expeditions. When I use the term Adventure, I am speaking about the latter, technically challenging wilderness expedition challenges. I mean to describe whitewater paddling, multi-pitch climbing, alpine mountaineering, long-term backpacking, desert canyoneering. The good stuff.
For the aspiring professional adventure may seem off and away, it may even seem downright “unprofessional” (The boogeyman word of this age). Why, then, are United States astronauts visitors to the National Outdoor Leadership School? Why has Outward Bound created their Center For Peacebuilding, blending experiential education and conflict resolution for world leaders?
The confrontation with hesitancy and fear, the willful step into a flash before the eyes - adventure doesn’t teach recklessness, the opposite in fact. Similar to more leisurely recreation re-charging workers the world over, adventure activities recharge our understanding of self-potential and ethical understanding(http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/search/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=EJ871292&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=EJ871292). How effective wilderness has been, then, with returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan (http://www.outwardbound.org/veteran-adventures/outward-bound-for-veterans/). Whoever, wherever you are - get out there! The pursuit of self-actualization is not a saunter, it is a white-knuckled sprint.
Hundreds of feet in the air, standing on a toe, exactly where I had to be. That day our group made it only half the way up, three out of six pitches. Nevertheless we made it out of the forest just in time before the sun went down. If I hadn’t had that experience the first weekend of the semester to shake out the kinks… there’s no telling where I would be. So for fun, for excitement, for the view, go on an adventure and come back from it for reasons bigger - you won’t know them until you’re halfway to the top.
This past summer I was granted the opportunity to field instruct, with two other co-instructors, a twenty day wilderness expedition for The Wilderness
School, under the Connecticut Department of Children and Families (DCF). The Wilderness School serves children affiliated with the CT DCF. The program falls into a bracket of adventure activities known as Therapeutic Adventure, not to be confused with Adventure Therapy.
To quickly distinguish the two, Adventure Therapy must contain, programmatically, a mental health treatment plan and staff licensed clincial counselor. Therapeutic Adventure is much less defined - it could be as simple as a program like Outward Bound for Veterans, which, as far as I understand, provides a wilderness experience for a specific population with specific risks and experiences. This is closer to the “Let the Mountain Speak for Itself” method of processing. On the other hand, lies The Wilderness School which teaches de-escalation and intervention methods for students in the field, utilizes Reality Therapy techniques, and often deals with a population with diagnosed mental health concerns.
The course flow is as follows: The “Crew”, or, total group of participants and instructors, begins a training-expedition of backpacking along the Appalachian Trail(AT), moves to rock climbing, then to canoeing, followed by a service project, a solo experience, and then a final-expedition back along the AT where students largely manage themselves unless necessary for safety or further instruction. You may be familiar with this line-up, as it follows the Outward Bound expedition model.
Now, as far as the trip went, I didn’t learn much in the way of technical skills. I became better at top-rope anchor building, I learned a new hitch, and I got frustrated with a crappier type of stove. However, I grew exponentially by dealing with students and understanding the structure of the program. Utilizing intervention techniques, chasing down participants who’ve decided to run away, responding to all sorts of medical incidents, and most of all, earning the trust of my students and facilitating their growth.
The Wilderness School, established in 1974, is a front-running progressive program with more of a taste for social work than for clinical counseling. There are virtually no other programs like it, and being a part of that family is a second home. If you live in Connecticut, please advocate for this program.
The photo attached is rocks day, staff training in early June.
