Rainbow Warrior in Training

I'm not sure exactly where Velvet is.  I think he's somewhere in the Southwest corner of Wyoming, at Three Peaks Ranch.

 

But he might be in some canyon in Utah.  I don't think he's doing Rivers until later in the semester

That's not him in the photo - but it's what they do - unless they are hiking in which case they do this:

I lifted these pictures from the school's website.  Sooner or later, he's going to be in Nevada at a place called Red Rocks, learning to climb like this:

He's already been caught in a blizzard when they were hiking in the Rockies.

When I talked to him last week, he said that sleeping in the snow fort they built was better than sleeping outside.  I'm pretty sure that I'm not going to be able to talk to him for a while, though, because he's not going back to the base for some weeks and can't get a cell phone signal.  It's kind of weird when there's no way to talk to your kid - but the instructors have radio phones or something so that if somebody gets hurt, they can call a helicopter.  Since I haven't gotten a bill for a helicopter, I imagine all is well.

For the past ten days, he's been doing the course work for his Wilderness First Responder certification.  Really and truly, he's at the ranch in this photo except it's winter so I expect there's snow.

I have a syllabus for the course, so I know he goes from WFR to Canyons. They are in the Colorado Plateau region of Utah in a canyon like this:

According to the information from the school, they get to explore some relics of Anasazi culture.  The Anasazi were cliff dwelling Navajos.  He was jazzed about it.

Velvet is taking five classes in his Semester in the Rockies:

• Environmental Ethics, Leave No Trace, and Leadership
• Natural Resources Learning (NRL), Group Leadership Techniques
• Wilderness Skills Practicum and Leadership
•  NRL Risk Assessment, Management and Decision Making
• Wilderness First Responder

So far, his grades are two As, two Bs and a B+ but he can't remember which grade goes to what class.   We're all just glad the grades are great and he's having fun.  Here he is in real life, right after his junior year in high school, when he did a summer course where the group spent thirty days in the Wind River Wilderness.  I'd link to the school, but when I've done that in the past, somebody in Lander, Wyoming visits the blog a couple of times a day which makes me nervous.  Nevertheless, our entire family is grateful that there's a school like this Outdoor Leadership school, and that kids can have the opportunity to go into the wilderness to learn about ecosystems and how to Leave No Trace in the environment.  Maybe if more people had the experience, Tim DeChristopher would not have been compelled to pose as a bidder to disrupt the sale of Utah's wilderness to Bush's friends in the oil and gas industry (DemocracyNow! 12.22.08, Peaceful Uprising 03.03.2011)

Greenpeace says:

We take the name of our flagship, the Rainbow Warrior, from a North American Cree Indian legend. It described a time when humanity's greed has made the Earth sick. At that time, a tribe of people known as the Warriors of the Rainbow would rise up to defend her.
As one of the longest banners we've ever made summed things up, "When the last tree is cut, the last river poisoned, and the last fish dead, we will discover that we can't eat money..."

I'm very proud to be the mother of a Rainbow Warrior in Training.  Who knows where this experience will take him?  At the very least, he can be a bartender at any eco-resort with a zip line. Sounds like Thing of Beauty Number 06-101 in the Exploring Beauty challenge.