Celebrate Your Mistakes: Wilderness Expedition in Patagonia pt. 3 // Experiential Education # 3

This is a story about a mistake.

It's also about why we need to let people make their own mistakes, even at risk of unpleasant consequences-- and the surprising things that can happen when we go with a mistake rather than fight it.

We're on a 30-day kayaking expedition in Chilean Patagonia, far from civilization. 13 Americans, late teens to early twenties, 3 instructors.

Our start and end are set, but everything in between is not. Each day we look at the map and try to assess how far we can go en route to Point B, and which islands we might be able to camp on. Not all islands are camp-worthy. Some are so rocky or cliffy or spiky or jungle-y that there's just no place to pull in and set up for the night.

Crossings are dangerous, especially if you happen to be miles from shore. If someone or, worse, sometwo, capsize in open water, hypothermia is a real possibility. There are no humans around save us, and a hospital is at least a few days away. All we've got for summoning help is a satellite phone that might not work in inclement weather.

We have to be careful about going out if the sea is too rough, or might get too rough. If we have to camp somewhere undesirable, we could be stuck until the storm clears, and all ready we've been grounded for days at a time.

2 weeks in, it's been raining almost nonstop and I don't mind. I've never been somewhere so beautiful, and I've never been so at peace with myself.

We started by following our expert instructors' lead. Now that we have demonstrated basic skills and experience, our mentors are giving us more choice and responsibility, stepping back as we make decisions as a team to set goals, assess risks, go for it, and live with the results.

Today it's getting dark and we need to get to shore. We huddle in, look at the map, talk it over, and choose a location to settle down for the evening.

We arrive in time to have no other choice but to camp here right now. Pulling our kayaks in, the smells are surprising, to say the least.

What is that?

Headlamps on.

This little island seems to be made entirely of rocks and trash.

We've managed to find the tidal vortex that collects the plastic, rope, wire, machinery, and oil from fishing operations hundreds of miles away and dump them right here, and it stinks. There is no level ground for sleeping on, nor hope of rearranging it.

We'll just have to make do. We unpack, set up and make our evening food, shocked by the revelation of pollution in what we had thought was a pristine, untouched place. We make fires in the rain to keep warm without having to bundle up in our lumpy stinking tents. Gross. Card games can't take our minds off of our unfortunate situation, even in the face of greater misfortunes, precious chocolate gambled away.

"Speaking of chocolate," somebody says, "isn't it Halloween?"

Oh, yeah. I had completely forgotten about calendar time. We try to remember how many days we are in, add that to the date we started, and... nobody is totally certain.

So, yeah. It is Halloween. And what do you do on Halloween?

You make costumes.

If you find the trash unicorn with braided blue rope hair, that's me. You might also recognize The Village People, Violet Beauregard (the blueberry girl from Willy Wonka), and Gandolf, among others.

But what the. . .
.
.
Is that. . .
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.
.
.
Music??!!?!?!

We haven't heard music in weeks.

As we were searching for our outfits, our instructors busted out a portable speaker system they had kept hidden this whole time, with just enough juice for one special occasion.

The next day, we're talking over the decision-making process that landed us all on Trash Island. "Yeah, we thought that wasn't the best choice," the instructors said. "There was another island in a different direction that looked bigger and flatter. We weren't even sure that we'd be able to camp on the island you all had chosen."

In other words, they watched us make what they thought to be a poor decision, and they let us do it, without trying to correct us. They had discussed amongst themselves whether or not to intervene, and, deciding that the potential consequences would not be life-threatening, they chose to remain silent and watch how we would handle the situation. They were willing to let us risk suffering the consequences of our decision, knowing they would have to live with them - and with us, if we had gotten upset - too.

I wonder, What would it look like if all educators allowed people to make their own mistakes? Or friends, peers, bosses, parents? How much energy is wasted worrying about doing things "wrong," and what kind of attitude towards life, and towards our human peers, does this attitude habituate for us? Is it even

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In this case, we made our mistake, and instead of getting down on ourselves, we lived with it. There was no other choice. And what happened? The most glorious dance party Trash Island has (likely) ever seen.

We celebrated our mistake. We dressed up in our trashy mistake, we danced in the rain, some of us half-naked, half-costumed. Nobody slept much that night, but we got up in good spirits. We survived, the storm cleared, and the weather gods granted us passage away from Trash Island.

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Now that I do youth mentorship work, I am in the complicated position of evaluating when to let the kiddos I'm responsible for make "mistakes," doing my best to frame them as learning experiences, and celebrating the growth and learning after taking the risk of not getting it "right."

These are the kinds of questions I'm constantly working through as an educator, and that I will continue to explore and unpack through writing here on Steemit. I hope it's interesting to you, and maybe even expansive. Please don't hesitate to let me know what you think, or to share your own experiences- I'd love to hear how reading this strikes you.

Check out my blog if you want to read more about how this Patagonian wilderness expedition shaped my life and my views on education. So far, I've written two other posts about it.

More soon!
~Jared