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An Overview of My NOLS Essays by Morgan Hite Over the course of ten years at NOLS (eleven years, technically, from my Instructor's Course in 1987 to my last season at the Western Canada Branch in 1997) I was in a long battle with the administration. Although I did not experience much conflict with the school's directors and managers in the first three years that I instructed (1988 - 1990), subsequently I and many other instructors became involved in trying to stop the school's front office from radically changing what the organization was about. At issue were its style, its values, and how it represented its purpose to the public. We had discussions among ourselves, met countless times with administrators and board members, wrote letters, and conducted a survey of instructors. None of this had any effect. I am aware that other instructors who came to the school before I did report that they saw the school losing track of the same issues well before I even arrived. In this context, I must consider that perhaps the school has never really been "on track," and that over the years we who have worked there repeat a pattern in which we arrive, see something which looks too good to be true, and discover after a few years that, yes, it is in fact too good to be true. In this case, the perception that the school began a precipitous decline in quality a few years after I arrived would be common to many instructors in different eras. It would more reflect the individual's increasingly honest perceptions of the school rather than the discovery of a true turning point at which the organization became seduced by, say, mainstream corporate values. Nevertheless, I believe I can make a good case that while the tendency to "sell the school's soul," as it were, was always there, the administrators were never really able to put their money where their minds were until the school had big money, and this is what began to happen in the late 80's. In the end, I think there was a clear qualitative difference between how the NOLS of 1988 managed its people and publicized its business and how the NOLS of 1997 approached the same things. I tried many angles to answering the question, "What's wrong at NOLS?" I wrote about how the school has lost sight of a number of principles, and each, at the time that I wrote about it, seemed to me to be the essential principle that an outdoor school must never lose sight of. A list of those principles, viewed broadly and in no particular order, would include: the essence of wilderness, humility, wildness, the preservationist ethic, flexibility, community, courage, daring, boldness, honesty, fidelity to the outdoor community, and the traditional values of outdoor education. I also variously suggested that the administration has grabbed hold of: hierarchy, conformity, the corporate model, the industrial metaphor, or short-sightedness. All of these observations were true, but depending on the day, the weather and what you had for lunch, one angle could look better than the others. [I should also say that now, from the twenty-first century, the essential problems I dealt with at NOLS are also those of our mainstream culture. That is to say that if you work there and you want to somehow bring the school back to embracing wilderness values, you face what is qualitatively the same battle that people face who are trying to stop the building of more malls or the transfer of the powers of elected governments powers over to transnational corporations. The insincere bluster of the developer and the finely honed PR responses of the corporate spokesman were essentially what we faced every day at NOLS, although it was from our own administration. At NOLS it was as though people in the office heard voices that told them that what we were saying made no sense. The NOLS administration had come to be anchored in mainstream corporate culture. Fortunately, other business cultures and better examples of how to run a company abound. The Patagonia clothing company offers a possible model here, since it, like NOLS, has a client base anchored in the socio-economic elite, but unlike NOLS displays a real understanding of timeless values and the perils of growth. If only Yvon Chouinard ran NOLS! (He said, "We need to seek out and hire 'dirt bags'; these are the passionate outdoor people who are our core customers. We believe that it is easier to teach these people business than to turn a businessman into a passionate outdoor person.") Knowing these other business exemplars is important, since, practically speaking, changing NOLS is more than changing internal factors like values, style, attitudes and personnel. Employees will also have to change the milieu in which the school floats: the outside organizations and forces with which it has relationships.] I went through a number of phases as a participant in this conflict. I began as an idealistic, almost charismatic, visionary, in love with the wilderness and what it stood for (to me). In this trusting, naïve space I wrote "Marketing the Sacred Space." When the direction of the school's administration became clearer, I defiantly declared our ideals more loudly ("What We're About" ) and tried to inspire the administration to forego the path of conformity ("The Value of Courage and Daring"). I also realized that there might be some structural components to the school that were predisposing us to this conflict ("A Modest Proposal"). When idealism produced no results in changing the way the school was heading, I entered a phase where I believed that carefully laid out arguments would change things. In retrospect, this was also pretty naïve. I offered sequenced arguments to show that, because it is based in the wilderness, NOLS must have a certain style, values and behavior. ("The NOLS Instructor," "Letter to the Board" and "It Is Words, Not Clothes, Make The Man"). I did not make these essays public at the time; rather, I used them to develop my own arguments for face-to-face discussions. When reason produced no change, I became cynical about the entire process of internal debate at NOLS, and my interests turned inward, to exploring whether I could pinpoint the single underlying philosophical principle that unified all of my objections. This produced a lengthy compendium of what I had to say ("What The Traveller Saw"). I also left NOLS, too disheartened by what I saw in the administration on a weekly basis to put any more energy into the school. Finally I produced "An Industry In The Wilderness" as a feature-length essay. Because its audience was clearly restricted to NOLS instructors, and because it was infused with a bitter tone, I never atttempted to publish it Throughout my time at NOLS I generated other pieces simply meant to be useful to other instructors, such as 30 Days to Oblivion and the Anklebiter's Handbook. I turned out some reflections on the dirty day-to-day business of NOLS, such as Memoirs of a Permit Applicant and Tending the Gate I should point out here that the day-to-day reality of working at NOLS is still good enough to draw remarkable people. The changes with which I had such a problem still do not affect the field instructional scene to the extent that it is no fun. The school still draws remarkable students and remarkable instructors. Of course you do find yourself tripping over stupid things in the field, like the recently announced practice of having to segregate students by gender in the first week or so of courses - another choice taken away from the instructor, another loss of expeditionary realism. But on the whole you are still in the wilderness, you are still doing impressive things most people would not attempt, and you are still having great adventures. And maybe your instructor team has the wisdom and the vision to quietly blow off those new directives from Lander. In some of these essays I talk about NOLS people as if they are the cream of the outdoor world, and this may offend outdoors people in general. It should. I apologize for the severely restricted world view I had while I was at NOLS. It tells you something about the internal "organizational culture" of the school. I hope to look at this culture in an essay one of these days, and the effects it has upon the people who work at NOLS.. I publish these essays on the Web not because I expect them to make a difference at NOLS. I doubt they will, although if these writings inspire one more instructor to make one more appointment with one more board member to explain why there must be a change in order to make NOLS into something truly worthwhile, that will be fine with me. I post them because they were the real fruit of a very sad experience. I wrote a lot about the problems at NOLS - over one hundred and ten essays, articles, speeches, etc. To me they represent positive energy grappling with an insurmountable problem. Some of them I thought were quite good. It seems to me they should be read. Morgan Hite, 14 May 1999, Smithers, British Columbia August 20, 2001
P.S. Some people at NOLS might be offended by this, and say, "How dare he expose so much about what goes on inside here?" Yes, NOLS has been rather affected over the past ten years by an "Edifice Complex," which makes the administration want to maintain to the outside world that within the school we all agree on what we're doing, what our values are and what sort of face we should be showing the outside world. But it ain't so. NOLS is filled with internal debate, most of it impassioned, some of it bitter. The wilderness world tugs one way, the business world tugs the other. The question is, which one will have the greater influence on the school? |