The Monday after Spring Break 1990, when I lost my virginity terribly and then
ended up in ICU having pulled a Janis Joplin, my Earth Sciences teacher tossed a Junior
Earth Warrior application on my desk. “You should apply,” Mr. Rose said. I couldn’t see
his mouth, hidden in his crazy mountain man beard, but his eyes were hard behind his
John Lennon glasses. “Seriously.” In that moment, I knew that my secret, what I thought
was between me and that senior, Greg, was public knowledge. Mr. Rose knew. “I’ll write
you a stellar letter of recommendation. Utah is one of the choices. You’d be able to school
the other kids on what I’ve taught you.”
Mr. Rose was the advisor of our Ecology club, although it was decades before Al
Gore would travel the world, and I’d make my own high school students view his documentary. He was youngish. He wore his hair pulled back in a small knot at the nape of
his neck, so I never knew how long it really was. And although he wore ironed shirts and
ties, the ties were sarcastic in the way they hung, loose and sloppily knotted. Parrots
splashed in midflight. Peace signs. If you looked closely, Jerry Garcia would emerge from
glossy primary colors. Where he got those ties, before the internet exploded, was something I would later wonder. He wore thick socks with his Birkenstocks, all year, and he
ate tofu. We made fun of him, but his earnestness was touching, and sometimes I would
look around at my classmates, the boys especially, and think someday we’d all grow into
ourselves the way Mr. Rose had. We were in the space between wanting to be adults and
knowing we weren’t
I’d like to know now what I wrote as my reasons for choosing Utah, for wanting so desperately to go. I am certain I did not put down the real reasons I wanted to go.
It’s strange to teach in the same high school I found myself hating. The school where I
see myself, so long ago, reflected in the kids I now teach. The other day, I wanted to tell
someone that I’m Mr. Rose now, except I wear hippy skirts with my business jackets, and
brightly colored Smart Wool socks with my Keene’s. I even teach in Mr. Rose’s classroom.
There’s no one to tell though. No one who would understand or remember him.
That summer, when the small plane landed at the St. George airport, it came to
a shuddering stop, and I exited right onto the tarmac. I was the last one, and the other
five Earth Warriors had known each other a full hour before I arrived. Our leader, Katie,
had sent us typed letters during the month of May full of lists. What to bring. What to
read. What to expect. She wrote we were working for Zion National Park and this wasn’t
a vacation. And when we weren’t working, we’d be learning about Zion and preserving
Mother Earth, and when we weren’t doing all of that, we’d be busy surviving. Finally,
and she ended each letter with this phrase, whatever we hauled in, we’d haul out.
This wasn’t entirely true. Six hours after landing, we were half way to Potato
Hollow, miles off any real trail in the true backcountry, and she explained we wouldn’t be
hauling out our “scat.” We’d be choosing one of two options: to smear it on a rock with
another rock, or to dig a deep hole and bury it. We unanimously chose burying. We’d
filled our packs with provisions bought at Smith’s grocery and hiked, deep into the night
of our arrival, before unrolling our sleeping bags in a sandy ditch. I was nestled between
D’Arcy from Connecticut and Amy from nowhere, Utah. At our feet were Sean from Massachusetts, Joshua from Texas, and Billy from Florida. Katie didn’t reveal where she was