Reflections From OutdoorEd With Prose and Painting

Upper School faculty Kristen Osborne-Bartucca and Laura Marion then asked students to use their weeklong OutdoorEd trips to reflect on the natural environments in which they were immersed. When they returned, students wrote essays that wove their sensory experiences with their philosophical musings in the vein of Thoreau's Walden and Dillard's Tinker Creek. 

In this issue of PolyNews, we are pleased to share the following guest essay by Catherine M. ’26 inspired by her OutdoorEd trip aboard the Tall Ship. Also, upon returning from OutdoorEd week this fall, students in Adam Feldmeth's painting course reflected on their experiences by selecting a poignant moment and rendering this in oil paints. Landscape paintings included views from Jameson Ranch, Point Reyes, Escalante, and the Channel Islands. Please find these artists’ renditions to accompany this essay.

We spend our days in a dreamless sleep, cradled by the rhythmic rocking of the ship, the gentle sway of the waves lulling us into an unconscious rest. It’s as if Mother Nature is tucking us in, nurturing us in the absence of our mothers, wrapping us in her embrace as we float on the surface of her endless sea. It’s a strange sleep that doesn’t refresh but suspends, a limbo between wakefulness and dreams. The ship becomes our whole world, a tiny island of existence. Out here, everything we once knew feels so far away, like it belongs to someone else, a different version of ourselves that we left behind on the shore.

Our landlocked day-to-day lives are in opposition to life aboard a ship. We are used to constant motion, the relentless go, go, go of modern life; every minute accounted for, every second filled with something urgent. But here, it is a different pace. We learn to wait and watch, to tend and heave. The endless rush of our usual existence is replaced by the slow, steady rhythm of the sea, a rhythm to which we are forced to surrender. There’s no fighting it, at least no winning anyway. No pushing forward. On the ship, you are not in control the same way you are on land. You are at the mercy of the wind, the waves, the ever-changing moods of the sea.

So when we awake from these periods of hibernation and suddenly snap out of our suspended state, we realize just how much time has passed and rush to capture all that we fear we missed. We grab our cameras, snapping photos as though photographing the moment will allow us to claim it and make up the reverie. We take pictures of sunsets, dolphins, and the vast ocean stretch, not because we need to remember but because we need proof. We need to document that we were here and experienced this moment. These are photos that we know deep down we probably will not look at again unless they come up unexpectedly in the shuffle of our digital memories. They’ll sit there, stored away, gathering dust in some forgotten corner of our devices. But we take them anyway. We need them. We need the proof.

If we do not take these photos, if we do not immediately share them when we return to our normal routine, how can we evidence that this one-of-a-kind experience really happened? If we cannot post it online or broadcast it to our friends, our followers, and the world, how will anyone know that we were there? The experience does not feel authentic until it’s documented, not for ourselves, but for others. We do not post because we want to share the beauty with the world, to make it communal. No, we post to show others that we were here, saw this beauty firsthand, and had this rare moment that they unfortunately could not share.

It’s a strange paradox, isn’t it? We are surrounded by breathtaking, untouched nature, moments of awe and wonder, yet there’s a disquiet that it does not count unless it’s photographed, posted, and seen by others. We don’t simply experience the sunset, the dolphins, or the endless horizon. We experience them through the lens of the camera, already thinking ahead to how they will look on a screen, in a post, on a timeline. The act of witnessing becomes secondary to the act of documenting. We become more concerned with proving that we lived this moment than actually living it.

And so, we find ourselves in this strange loop—sleeping through the moments, waking to capture them, and then retreating into sleep, only to do it all over again. With its slow pace and quiet rhythms, the ship teaches us patience, to wait, and to observe. But we fight against it, still tethered to the frenetic speed of the world we left behind. We have forgotten how to be present and simply let the moment wash over us without needing to hold onto it, letting it slip through our fingers like water. Instead, we grasp at it, clutching our cameras, needing to freeze the fleeting, as if that will somehow make it last forever.

The sun quickly descends behind the island, slipping lower each second. You turn away for what feels like just a moment, but when you look back, it’s nearly gone. We rush to grab our cameras, hands scrambling, hearts racing, desperate to catch this fleeting beauty before it vanishes. We are not ready to let the moment slip by unmarked without capturing it, freezing it in a frame we can revisit. 

Going.

In our frantic haste, we tear through our bags, pulling open zippers, turning them inside out, fingers searching for the cold, familiar plastic of our cameras. 

Going.

We turn back, convinced it has only been a few seconds, hoping to preserve this sliver of time to add it to the growing collection of moments we have carefully tucked away. 

Gone.

When we look back, the sun has wholly fallen behind the island, tucked beneath the horizon like a secret too precious to hold onto. Only a fading golden glow remains, painting the sky's last blush of relevance.

On the last day, the sea air is fresh and salty, kissing my face as I lean over the bow of the Irving Johnson, scanning the water for something more. And then I see them—dolphins, dancing alongside the ship, their sleek, muscular bodies cutting through the waves as if part of the sea itself. They weave from port to starboard, back and forth, effortlessly graceful, with a fluid choreography that seems as old as the ocean. They disappear for a breath, only to be replaced by another pod, their silver forms glinting in the fading sunlight. Their movements are so synchronized and rhythmic that it feels like watching a symphony unfold on the water’s surface. Each time they break the surface, the water droplets catch the light, transforming them into shimmering jewels suspended in the air for just a moment before they fall back into the sea. We crowd to the starboard side, the boat tipping slightly under our weight, then hurry to the port side, eager to see each dolphin that passes us by, not wanting to miss one of these beautiful creatures.

And then, as suddenly as they arrived, they’re gone. Their sleek bodies fade into the ocean depths, leaving only a gentle ripple behind them. We catch our breath, standing in silence for a beat until we spot two spouts of water a few feet behind the ship, whales this time, larger, grander, a different kind of beauty we were too caught up to notice, and are sad, for just a minute, because we assume our sister ship saw both, that they won the contest of consuming beautiful moments. 

How often do we try to capture fleeting moments in life without realizing that the real magic lies in being present? In a world surrounded by man’s creations, glass, steel, and constant progress, how often do we experience something pure? We’ve turned the sunset into a commodity to possess and frame. We live in an era where success is measured by how much we accumulate; the more you have, the higher your tally on life’s scoreboard. 

Nature resets this desire for more, this innate acquisitiveness, forcing you to be content with what you have. In Nature, these moments smack you in the face. They come and go too quickly to be held, too wild to be contained. You have no choice but to be in the moment, to let them wash over you like the waves, to feel them pass through you, untouchable yet unforgettable, and to become aware that another comparable moment is barreling around the corner. If you are not ready, it will smack you once more. You will again encounter the choice of either adding it to your trophy wall that you will never look at again or taking in the moment that you will remember for the rest of your life. 

You do not feel this shift in the priority of all that you value until you return home and realize your house is a shrine of things you need to reinforce your connectivity to everything the world deems important. 

These things belong to someone else now. Finally, you realize you must let them go; only then can you find deliverance and truly be there, in the moment, without inhibition. Lay Away.