Learning on the Water

Hello! My name is Joe and I’m a rising Senior at Whitman College, majoring in Environmental Studies and Geology.  This summer, I’m interning at the Freeflow Institute, an LLC that curates university-accredited outdoor education experiences intended to help humans connect with one another and place, while fostering creative freedom in wild spaces. 

Working for The Freeflow Institute has been a unique and engaging experience for me as a river guide and college student because of both the educational and outdoor oriented factors of the organization. In late June, I was lucky enough to learn and guide through Freeflow on a field course, floating the Main Salmon, a section of the larger Salmon River. The river trip was logistically facilitated by Wilderness River Outfitters, while much of the educational aspect of the trip was led by Chris La Tray, Montana’s Poet Laureate of 2024 and author of the book, Becoming Little Shell: A Landless Indian’s Journey Home. My unique position on the trip pushed me to look intrinsically and consider possibilities I had previously brushed over.

Due to my current position as an intern with Freeflow and prior experiences working as a commercial river guide, I ended up straddling both the learning and guiding aspects of the field course. I won’t lie here, interacting with participants as a guide and fellow student initially broke my brain, launching me into a mild identity crisis. For example, in the mornings and evenings, I would sheepishly walk away from the crew to attend Chris’s lectures, while other guides busted their asses to break down camp, prepare a quiche or a cake, and rig boats. I felt like I was losing my imaginary guide card. Without the river guide persona to hide behind, I found myself grasping at straws in my interactions with other participants and guides. The degree to which I struggled without a clear role to cling to helped me identify just how much I had been relying on roles to define my relationships to other people and places, on or off the water. It wasn't until I let go of my precious roles and approached people and places as just me that I started to feel whole, witnessing a more accurate, more genuine image of not just myself, but my new friends and favorite float trip on the planet. My time on the water left me wondering how much the roles we create for ourselves off the water cloud our perceptions of each other, diluting any potential for the genuine connections we all seem to search for.