Over the summer, I participated in a month-long backpacking trip in Alaska’s southern Talkeetna Mountains with a group of eleven kids my age as part of a National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) course. During the month, we were away from our phones, facing the problems of life in the wild— which usually consisted of how we were going to get to our next camp and what we were going to make for dinner. I learned how to connect with people during this trip; we were all we had for a month. This trip changed me in all the best ways. I learned a lot about myself, I got comfortable with being uncomfortable, I made many lifelong friends and I got to appreciate the beauty of a place many do not have the privilege to experience. If there is one thing this trip taught me, though, is to not be afraid to wander. Pack your backpack with only the essentials, get to know the adventurers around you and pause for a moment to take in the view. That’s when you’ll feel truly alive.

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Ellen Hommeyer

For navigation, we used topographic maps from the 1940s, an old Garmin GPS and a compass. The NOLS instructors taught us how to identify peaks and drainages, as well as how to make route plans when we travelled in groups independently from our instructors. With the map and GPS, we learned how to find our UTMs, which are exact coordinates. We used them to check if we were on our correct route and when we arrived to our planned camping site.