Love Plan B

Nature weaves an intricate web of life into all things. Here, the spirit of the mountains prevails, and the higher in the mountains you travel, the closer to the heavens you reach. The backcountry surrounds me: untraveled and inviting.

Rocky Mountain National Park is:

416 square miles

350 miles of trails

473 miles of streams

147 lakes

267 backcountry campsites

75 miles of paved roads

110 peaks over 10,000 feet

72 peaks over 12,000 feet

25% Alpine tundra

95% designated Wilderness

And the best part? This is my entire back and front yard. This wilderness is where humans are visitors and don’t remain. While there are 3 million annual visitors, the only year-round residents of the park are the natural inhabitants. Here, nature gets to be nature—it’s free to do it’s own thing.

Today was the first day of work, starting with backcountry training in the auditorium with our staff and a bunch of LE (Law Enforcement) rangers. As we sat and listened to the uniform and backcountry spiels for this year, I began to think about and write down all my hopes and goals for this summer. As Barry pointed out last summer, a hope is something you have no control over, while a goal is the opposite. As my list grew, the last thing we talked about it training before playing Jeopardy (who says Rangers can’t have fun in training!?) was about “Situational Awareness”—a word that came up all the time in training last summer too and that is so important in the field.

“Situational Awareness” is knowing what is happening all around you, along with your ability to process it. It’s the difference between perception and reality, and is ESSENTIAL to managing risk.

After the group backcountry training, our staff left and loaded into our government vehicles to head off to an unknown destination. Barry led the way, and we ended up at a huge mansion that once belonged to Mr. K. Kingston who I guess began and owned some huge banking firms in Denver. The place is used now for non-profit organization meetings and functions, and Barry had arranged for our staff meeting to be there. For the beginning, he encouraged us to explore around the house as we ate our lunches, until we finally settled into the giant living room. The seventeen of us sat in a circle and our personal training began.

The neat thing about Barry is that the training today was personal. Rather than going over rules and regs from the very beginning, he wanted us to all get to know one another. He said he wanted us to hear each other’s voices and see the sparkle in each other’s eyes as we talked so that we could see what excitement we were in for this summer. What other bosses do people have that strive for a healthy work culture made of two kinds of people, “comedians and philosophers?” His biggest goal is to make our government office the exact opposite of the DMV. (Oh, how I can relate to that right now!)

He asked us two questions that we were supposed to answer, popcorn style instead of around the circle so no one was pressured to talk at any point. The first questions: “What did you learn?”

All of my coworkers went around the room, sharing their bits of wisdom they’ve learned from over the years as I sat and planned out what I was going to say. The first was taken directly from Timon in The Lion King, “Home is where my rump rests.” I could directly relate to that, along with many of the following ideas: “Some relationships are for a reason, some relationships are for a season, and some relationships are for a lifetime.” (I might have to come back to this quote at some point this summer.) “Leave your egos at the door,” combined with “Arrogance kills.”

Finally, as I sat there thinking about my life and writing down ideas and notes on my yellow legal pad, I realized exactly what it is that I’ve been learning lately: I CAN’T plan out and control everything in my life. I spoke up and began telling about my very first Halloweens, when I would come home after going around the neighborhood, dump my candy on the floor, and then rather than eat it all before getting into trouble like a normal three-year-old, I’d begin to organize it by color or brand. I asked for a “little kitchen” for Christmas one year when I was younger and began to organize all the shelves and put the food away in its appropriate spots as soon as I saw Santa brought it for me. My main use for Barbies was to set up their houses and organize all their accessories, rather than actually play with the dolls (I was more into legos than dolls all along anyway!).

At the end of high school, my best friend Erin and I sat down and decided to plan our lives out. I wanted kids by a certain age, which meant I had to be married so many years before that, which meant I had to be dating the guy by so many years before that, and had to actually know the guy so many years before that…Throw in the job timeline, combined with school, and my life was set. When I was back home at my mom’s house recently, I found that timeline we had made and realized just how many of those dates I had missed. That’s when I realized what I was learning.

Andree pointed out to me, “you can set your goals, but you have to be willing to change your plans.”

How true is that in my life right now?! I am officially done with school and have nothing holding me back. I don’t owe any debts to anyone for my college expenses. I don’t have a relationship I’m involved in right now to tie me down somewhere. I am completely free to go wherever I want, so why not take a job in Anchorage, AK if that comes my way?

Thinking back even on my lesson plans during student teaching, I immediately thought back to the second grade incident. While I had everything planned out for my class, there was no way I could have accounted for the little boy to lunge at his classmate and tackle him, while choking him, to the floor. As John Lennon said, “Life is what happens when you’re making other plans.”

More importantly, as Barry pointed out today, “LOVE PLAN B.”

If you love “Plan B” and “Plan A” doesn’t work out, you’re still set either way. I am learning to roll with what life gives me, and see where I end up. Even after three days in Colorado and only one day at work, I can tell this is going to be yet again a summer of a lifetime.