My son Adam came back from his Outward Bound adventure in the Sierras last week, and that alone should be cause for celebration. Honestly, I thought he might just bail halfway through the two week trek but he stuck it out and does not seem to regret it.

“Imagine if boot camp was run by Uncle Brian,” was his first attempt at a description and a rather amusing one: my brother Brian is a good soul and one of the last of the CA hippies, at least in ideals and outlook, and while Adam and I seemed to agree that a challenge was in order, a harsh one might have been counterproductive. He said his leaders were two young women in their twenties who dug the Grateful Dead and had everyone write in their journals every night. Which might have been more appealing if they hadn’t been climbing up a mountain face for 12 hours.

From the descriptions I have had from friends of OB outings in the past, I get the impression things were a little more hardcore back in the day. The ten participants in Adam’s trek were not made to eat bark or fend for themselves alone, a stable of the old OB experiences, and he got along with all of them. Since he has told me on more than one occasion that he can’t stand people, this is in and of itself sort of a breakthrough.

Now he’s back in SF, hustling around getting ready for college, finding a place to live. “All of that stuff that used to drive me insane seems a lot easier now,” he told his sister the other night. Difficulty is, after all, relative. Putting up with dorm life and lame roomates in nothing compared to a steady diet of trail mix and building a camp fire every night. It’s life and life only.