The Heart is a Muscle Too: Navigating a Rite of Passage in the Wilderness
Past expedition to Cataract Pass, AB
With resilience, we are not in search of an achievement, but a way of being.
I first came across this line about resilience in the cluttered back office of the summer camp where I used to work. It was a quiet, rainy June evening; I was flipping through a binder of quotes collected by a previous program director and stopped at this one.
“Life—and the subject of resilience—rarely allows for perfect precision,” it read. “Math is a subject that allows for precision. If I ask you, ‘What’s seven times seven?’ you know the exact answer: forty-nine.”
“But what if I ask you, ‘How do you deal with fear?’”
The quote is from Resilience, a book published as a series of letters to the writer’s former comrade in the Navy SEALs, a man who had started struggling with mental health and substance use after finishing combat deployment in Afghanistan.
Several years later, I came back to the question of resilience while developing a rite of passage program as part of my work with Next Gen Men, a nonprofit organization dedicated to ending gender-based violence through supporting boys’ well-being and positive development. Over the last few summers, my colleague Stephanie and I have created a wilderness adventure program in which youth participants build lasting, supportive relationships as they face an extraordinary challenge together.
Fear is part of it—but so are the quiet moments and breathless laughter of friendship. So are the steady heartbeats and sore muscles of cooperation. While there is the question of courage, we bring new questions into the heart of our work: ‘What are you capable of?’ and ‘What kind of young man are you going to become?’
This past July, a group of young people set into the Rocky Mountains to find out.
Resilience is found within the relationships that matter most to us.
“Just landed,” my phone chirped from the airport parking lot, announcing the first arrival of a small group of high schoolers who were flying in from Toronto. We found each other in the bright sunshine of the kiss-and-ride, then made our way to a bench in the terminal to wait for the others. Families reunited and businessmen ordered taxis around us as the other boys arrived one-by-one with airline-tagged hiking backpacks slung over the shoulders.
“You guys ready to go?” I asked.
“Can we get something to eat?” one of them suggested. “I haven’t eaten in five hours.”
I raised my eyebrow. “Didn’t you just tell me you had a bunch of snacks on the plane?”
He gave me a look. “That doesn’t count.”
We picked up some food and I let them queue up their own music in the pickup truck. Childish Gambino and J. Cole competed for airtime while we accelerated away from the airport, headed towards the mountains.
The first day of each trip is always inevitably busy. We play games and get to know each other, discuss group norms and backcountry principles, sort out gear and divide up food. The boys practice setting up their tents and fitting everything into a single backpack. We cook together for the first time.
This trip was no different. But at the end of the day, things slowed down. We gathered in a circle for an impromptu stretch led by a boy who had been a competitive gymnast when he was younger. He and two friends set off to explore the river valley while the rest of the group played pickup baseball, long shadows dipping and stretching across the grass. The sun disappeared like alchemy, turning the fields to liquid gold.
It was fun, and it was peaceful. It was what this trip ended up being about.
Our route from the trailhead followed the Great Divide Trail through the towering boreal forest below Parker Ridge to the alpine scree beyond Nigel Pass. The boys wrestled in the patches of snow along the trail. Their jokes started to gain familiarity and their snacks somehow turned into an informal currency. We spent the first evening swimming and cooking beside the rushing glacier meltwater of the Brazeau River.
Last year, our group had reached the top of Cataract Pass—only to turn back in the face of a wall of cloud and impending rain. This year, we climbed the pass between a clear blue sky and melting patches of snow. From high above the valley, one of the boys started eyeing a spot to camp alongside Cataract Creek, where we ended up setting up our tents an hour or two later.
The trip had been named Mount Willis, and the goal was theoretically to find it. Motivated by our empty backpacks and a GPS full of topographic lines, four of us left behind the camp to search for the summit. We hiked towards the headwaters of Cataract Creek, following the simplest contour lines along the slope and trying to guess how much farther it was to the windswept saddle overlooking the valley.
At a set time, we stopped at a large, flat boulder to decide whether or not to keep going. The youth decided to spend their remaining time just appreciating the moment. We leaned against each other in the warm afternoon sun and gazed at the valley below. Our tents were nothing but tiny pinpricks of colour nestled between the towering rock walls of Mount Stewart and the Cirrus Ramparts. The valley dropped to Pinto Lake far to the south. It felt like we could see forever.
As the evening shadows stretched out across the valley with nothing but scraggly spruce trees and glacier-edged mountains around us, we started to feel the distance between our camp and the rest of the world. Behind us were 15 kilometres to the Icefields Parkway. If we had continued on past Pinto Lake, there would have been another 40 kilometres to the David Thompson Highway. You could feel it.
It felt like being untethered, in a way, but that wasn’t quite it. I wrote about it in my journal after the hike back up Cataract Pass the next day, and I put it like this:
On the edge of an inhospitable mountain range that could swallow you whole if you let it, you have one thread connecting you back to the safe and comfortable world that you left behind—your body’s physical ability to get you back to where you started.
You have nothing to hold onto but that, and so you grasp tightly.
But the reality is that you’re not alone. And I’ve found that the moments we’re truly faced with the vastness and rugged indifference of the wilderness, those are the times when we turn most trustfully to the steadfast presence of the people who are by our side. The connections we form in those experiences end up feeling different because they are different—because right then, they were the only connection we had. They were everything.
That’s why it still puts a smile on my face to think about the boys arguing about peanut butter and jam, or losing their cutlery on a daily basis. (You have one fork. How did you lose it? How did you lose it again?) Amidst the blisters and mosquitos, the vomit and sunscreen, between the cold mornings in the alpine and the hot afternoons under the relentless sun, we held on—not just to ourselves, but to each other.
When I think about how to explain this, I envision our final campsite overlooking the slanted mountains above Nigel Pass. When we first got there, the boys spent more time than I would have expected just sitting together on the edge of the cliff. One of them lay back with his hands behind his head, eyes reflecting the feathery clouds above him.
Dinner that evening took place by the river, but the youth spent most of their time perched on that rocky outcropping. They threw rocks at imaginary targets below the cliff. They talked about climbing the ridge line and breathed and watched the sun go down behind the jagged horizon of the Sunwapta Range.
Manhood can be quiet.
“And there at the camp we had around us the elemental world of water and light, and earth and air. We felt the presences of the wild creatures, the river, the trees, the stars. Though we had our troubles, we had them in a true perspective. The universe, as we could see any night, is unimaginably large, and mostly dark. We knew we needed to be together more than we needed to be apart.” — Wendell Berry
The way we find out what we’re truly capable of is by pushing ourselves past what we thought was our limit.
The promise of an authentic challenge brought our second group of boys to a 40 kilometre loop in Kananaskis Country. After a busy 24 hours getting everything ready, we headed out on a windy, sun-filled morning, following the trail around the north shore of Upper Kananaskis Lake and into the forested valley between Mount Putnik and Mount Lyautey. Eight kilometres into the trek, we reached the Forks backcountry campground. The boys dropped their backpacks on the mossy forest floor, and I could feel a sense of relief as they passed around some water and snacks.
Then we really started to climb.
The final portion of that first day involved a steep climb more than 300 metres in elevation to the plateau above Three Isle Lake. It felt like at the end of every switchback, the trail rose endlessly out of sight. For some of the local youth, the challenge was a familiar one; but for others, it took everything they had. We ended up dividing into two groups—the faster youth forged ahead to the campsite, and then came back to help the others carry their backpacks up the final stretch of trail.
In the end, they made it. The sun warmed their aching bodies after a rest in their tents and a swim in the lake. “That was the match-up,” I told the boys during dinner. “It doesn’t get harder than that.”
I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Late afternoon the next day, the western horizon was suddenly dominated by a billowing cloud of smoke that spread across the sky, glowing orange in front of the sun. None of us had ever seen anything like it. I turned on the satellite communication device to check in with our support staff. “Any sign of a wildfire near us?” I sent along with a set of coordinates. “Big plume of smoke blowing in through otherwise clear skies to the west.”
“Closest fire near you is 60 km west near Invermere,” came the response. “Classified out of control.”
The GPS beeped softly as I waited for Stephanie to come back to main camp so I could fill her in. I unlocked it to find another message. “Strong storm coming to you from SW as well. Should hit around 11 AM tomorrow.”
Stephanie and I started making plans to reverse our route, but decided to make the final call the following morning. One of the boys went to listen to music inside his tent to calm himself down. Two others went to watch the smoke cloud. The rest started writing down who had which lanterns and headlamps, in case we needed to hike back over the pass overnight.
I unzipped the tent to check on the younger one. “I think it’s already starting to pass,” I reassured him. “We’ll probably have forgotten this by morning.”
“Jonathon?” a voice called. I’m a light sleeper, especially while camping, so I was out of my tent in less than a minute, blinking in the darkness. A soft wind brushed through the pine trees. “There’s a group of porcupines eating our tent,” the boy outside my tent informed me. “Also, you can see the wildfire.”
The shadows of the forest hid the night sky and a surprisingly bold porcupine. “You guys are saying you could see a red glow on the western horizon?” I asked as I fumbled with a tree limb. Even I could hear the incredulity in my voice. “Are you sure it wasn’t…you know, the sunset?”
“First of all, it’s four in the morning,” one of the boys answered. He held out his phone, dimly illuminating the bushes around me. “Second of all, it looked like this.”
Considering the smoke in the evening, the glow of the wildfire at night, and the approaching storm, it was a simple call to turn back and head for the Forks campground. After a quick march around Three Isle Lake, we stopped for an early lunch at the top of the switchbacks. At first, we were able to appreciate a view of the distant valley—but then smoke started rolling over the mountain pass.
In a matter of minutes, the clouds turned a dirty orange and the mountains disappeared into the haze. The smoke was so thick it stung our eyes and made our noses run. You could almost see it clinging to the boys’ bodies as they swung their backpacks back onto their shoulders.
The first raindrops started to fall as we descended the switchbacks. Before long, the wildfire smoke had given way to a storm in full force. By the time we made it to some semblance of cover in the forested valley below, the group was soaked. Even among the trees, rain pounded relentlessly from above, soaking into moss-covered rocks and forming puddles filled with pine needles.
“How much longer do you think storm will last?” I typed out on the satellite communication device, shaking water off the keypad in between each word. It felt like the end of the world.
We gathered in a circle at the Forks backcountry campground and decided as a group to make camp rather than hiking further towards the trailhead. The rain petered out as we got the tents set up, and soon enough a brilliant sunbeam was drying multiple lines of clothing and gear.
After organizing the food into the bear-safe boxes, I ducked into a tent to see how the boys were doing. They still hadn’t organized themselves into getting warm or dry, so I helped them set up their beds and dive into conversation to pass the time. We got comfortable.
Then a peal of thunder echoed across the valley.
The rain hit once again as I jogged from tent to tent, packing away the almost-dry items from the lines and checking on each tent group. “Thanks Jonathon!” the third group of teenage boys shouted to me as I tucked their hiking boots under the tent fly.
“Are you guys warm enough?” I asked.
“We built a fortress of warmth,” they responded. “Come see!”
I unzipped the tent door to take a look, rain wet between my fingers and in my hair. Most of the tent was empty. They had lined up all three of their sleeping pads and were piled on top of each other underneath multiple layers of sleeping bags, and they couldn’t stop laughing. Even with storm raging across the mountains outside, I had a feeling this group of boys were going to be warmer than anyone else in the entire campground.
The rain pulled the smoke out of the air, but also dropped the temperature overnight. Steam enveloped the boys’ breakfast oatmeal and coffee, while the snow-dusted peaks of Putnik and Lyautey gleamed coldly above the trees. Somewhere between their fleece sweaters and cold hands, we could tell the boys had had a tough couple days.
Somewhere between the Forks and the trailhead, they started wearing thin.
Our last two days together weren’t perfect. We argued about phones and AirPods, and I went on a long walk with one of the teenagers. The cookstove on the final morning held a slightly burnt mess of pancakes, and the drive back to the city held an unusually quiet tiredness. As he connected to cell reception, one of the boys was shaken to find out that his favourite ski hill might have been lost to the Jasper wildfire.
But life—and the subject of resilience—rarely allows for perfection. The art of living is to find the joy in the challenge. So we played card games and paid for hot showers and the youth built a fort by the Lower Lake. We held our traditional honouring ceremony and watched the moonrise in the clearing that two young grizzly bears had wandered through hours before.
“With resilience,” wrote the Navy SEAL in that book of letters I had found years before, “you and I are not in search of an achievement, but a way of being.”
And the research that has defined Next Gen Men’s work for a decade tells us that the single most important factor for resilience is having at least one close, confiding relationship in which one feels truly known, accepted and valued.
That’s how you overcome challenge.
That’s how you find out what you’re capable of—and that’s how you measure the kind of young man you’re going to become.
