Twelve years leading groups in the woods has taught me not to fall in love with a plan. Wild things tend to happen in wild places. This lesson has been reinforced by a laundry list of the unanticipated: lightning, wildlife, snow, deadfall, raging crossings, and, most frequently, my own stupidity. Wilderness is the arena of humility – never more so than when a plan has been foiled and you have a group of people staring at you wondering what on god’s green earth are we going to do now.
In the summer of 2013, I was the Senior Youth Crew Leader for Montana Conservation Corps’ Northern Rockies Region. At the time, that word senior really meant something to me. I’d spent the year prior as a Youth Crew Leader, earning peanuts to cajole rambunctious high schoolers into doing backbreaking labor. My being the only Youth Crew Leader foolhardy enough to return for a second season granted me seniority. As such, it was my job to help train the leaders and support crews in the field from time to time.
My first site visit of the year was in Glacier National Park where we had a crew working the east side boundary to repair fences. The crew was in their second week and they were struggling. The cumulative grind of manual labor was a shock to the teens, as was the prolonged time away from home living out of a tent. The appointed daily wakeup time of 6:30 AM had progressively snoozed its way to 7:00, which was making them late to work.
I arrived on a Tuesday evening at the crew’s home base at Cut Bank Creek Campground. To live up to my senior status, I was damn well going to get the crew to start work on time Wednesday morning. I gathered the crew around and, generally speaking, laid down the law. Everyone was to be out of their tents by 6:30 AM sharp…or else.
Wednesday morning, I was out of my tent by 6:00 so I could bear witness to the power of my authority. I made coffee alongside the other leader, Ron, and we posted up at the picnic table waiting for all the youth to join us for breakfast, on time. By 6:20, the boys were out of their tent and eating Lucky Charms next to Ron and I. That just left us waiting on the girls tent, where I had made certain multiple alarms were set for 6:25.
When 6:25 came and went with nary a rustle from the girls tent, I began to quietly seethe. I stared at my watch, waiting for 6:30 to come and go, at which point it would be time for me to play bad cop. I was oblivious to my surroundings, as well as how quiet the boys had gotten at the picnic table.
At 6:29, I stood to make my move. As soon as I did, Ron and the boys simultaneously whispered my name in a worried tone. I initially thought they were pleading for patience, but then I looked over and saw they were all pointing toward the road. 75 feet away, a giant bull moose was slowly swaying toward our camp.
That last allowable minute of slumber happened in slow motion. The moose made its way directly to the front of the girls tent. If the girls got out of their tent at 6:30 sharp, as I’d insisted, they’d be greeted by a rack of antlers atop a startled moose.
What next? Yelling to the girls ran the risk of causing a commotion in the tent that might result in a trampling. Trying to scare off the moose also seemed unwise. The boys were staring at me to see what I’d do, but my options were limited. All I could do was hope the moose kept moving and that the girls kept pressing snooze. Thankfully, the girls could care less that the Senior Youth Crew Leader had told them they needed to wake up on time. And the moose eventually moseyed its way back down to the creek. We arrived ten minutes late to work that morning with no apologies.
A bull moose and a tent full of stubborn teenage girls showed me I wasn’t the boss of nothing. It was an important lesson that I’ve carried with me ever since. When you’re in the woods, you can’t let your ego get in the way. You’ve got to meet nature on its terms and adapt accordingly. Oftentimes, the best possible outcome is for nothing to go as you planned. And don’t ever try to get someone out of their tent before they are ready to face the day.
Sonny Mazzullo moved to Montana in 2011. After two stints with the Montana Conservation Corps, Sonny has been working with Wild Montana since 2014. He leads Volunteer Trail Crews and coordinates the Wilderness Walks program. He lives in Kalispell.
