The day I stepped onto the High Sierra campus was the day I remembered my passion for adventure. Adventure that spread from the outdoors to the classroom. This passion for adventure had long since slept in the dormant part of myself, waiting to be awakened by a quiet campus in Bass Lake, California, where forty students gathered to take on the greatest, most challenging, fun semester of our college careers. I had no idea what was in store. Well, I had an idea, but I no idea it would be so different from my initial expectations, and not in a bad way. There was something strange in the air on that first night in Bass Lake. Something tense, like a magic trick just before the magician pulls the curtain away. I desperately wanted to know what was behind the curtain at High Sierra, and as I took a step into the greatest adventure of my life I began to discover more and more of what it was that drew me to High Sierra in the first place: adventure. Adventure is a big word. People claim it for their own, taking pictures with cool filters and cool captions to show just how cool their adventurous lives are. But the High Sierra adventure, for me, was a different kind of adventure than the type you post on social media. Sure, there were pictures taken, pictures that I love, but behind the pictures was an experience beyond the capability of being described. Behind the pictures was a challenge that took me to the intellectual, spiritual, and emotional depths of myself, and it all started in the classroom. Starting at High Sierra, I came to grips with the power of thought. Thought about philosophy, about literature, but, truly, thought about what it means to be a human being, living and craving adventure. This is where it all started for me. In a classroom unconstrained by walls and rules and a preoccupation with saying the “right” thing; a classroom that was both constructed and free all at the same time. A classroom of adventure. And this is what High Sierra was, and is: a classroom where adventure takes place in and outside of the mind. It is a classroom where my sense of adventure grew from being limited to insta-worthy experiences to being a total body experience. Adventure, I realized, is nothing if I am not thinking about it, about myself, about the world around me and how I dive into it, shape it, and am changed, transformed, and impacted. In pictures, it looks like High Sierra is a place of recreation. It is, of course, but no exclusively. For behind the pictures, High Sierra is a place of stories. Stories that tell so much more than a picture can, for in this case a picture is only worth half of what the stories from High Sierra tell. These stories share of classes that extend way beyond the official classroom to the dinner table, to the campfire, to the trail winding through undiscovered backcountry terrain. These stories share of challenges faced, victories won, and friendships forged in the process. They share of late-night discussions around a table and a campfire, in sleeping bags under the stars and on top of the tallest rock formations in Yosemite National Park. These are not just stories that caption perfectly posed pictures. High Sierra stories are messy. They are filled with challenge and passion and thought. They are, at their core, human, and that’s what is celebrated at High Sierra. Because the human experience is more than just a paper or two turned in for a grade, or a picture that suddenly becomes a personal advertisement. The human experience is about living in such a way that involves the whole self, and this is what High Sierra truly showed me in my treasured time there. The human experience is about adventure. By Tyler Wilborn
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