What a month...

It's been a while since my last blog update, I've been quite busy!

After the AABAT Forum, I traveled to Mullumbimby with the director of Human Nature and I lived in a caravan on his property for about a week and a half before the expedition. I had barely any phone service while there, so I spent lots of time reading and drinking tea, which was delightful(: Although once I opened a cabinet in the kitchen area of the caravan and saw a HUGE spider, I'm talking the size of my hand. I surprisingly haven't encountered many terrifying bugs/creatures in Australia even though that's one of the things it's known for, but this spider made me want to burn the whole place down. But, seeing as I didn't have another place to live, I merely closed the cabinet door and never opened it again, praying that it wouldn't come out and kill me in my sleep. Andy's family was so kind to me and welcoming, and I really enjoyed and appreciated spending time with all of them. One morning before going into the office to prep for the expedition, Andy and I and his stepdaughter went to walk on along the Brunswick Heads beach just after sunrise, and it was really beautiful.

We took our sweet time on the beach, meanwhile Andy was determined to get a workout in so he was nowhere near us when I took these pictures.

I spent the week before the expedition helping out with stuff at the office like sorting gear and getting cameras ready, tagging along on some pre-expedition therapy sessions with the participants and Andy, and attending a team meeting with all of the adventure guides, therapists, and sailing skippers to plan out the prep camp. The prep camp was a 2-day hiking excursion with all of the participants to give them a glimpse into what they'd be doing for the 10 days later, gauge how well the group fit together, identify any new concerns that might pop up during the prep camp, and get the participants to start thinking about what they want to get out of the expedition and begin to bond with each other and us, the staff. During this prep camp, we camped on the property of Chris Hemsworth's neighbor. Yup, that's right, Thor. We didn't tell the participants about it, but I saw Chris Hemsworth's house! We're practically best friends now. We also got to learn about beekeeping from the inventor of the flow-hives (look it up) and get our own little jar of fresh honey.

5 days later, after another team meeting to debrief how the prep camp went and prepare more for the actual expedition, we commenced our 10-day hiking and sailing adventure. 

I have so many stories to tell and observations to make but I'm not sure how to fit it all into a blog post, so you'll have to trust me when I say that my mind was engaged and navigating relationships, dynamics, tensions, emotions, and physical stress the whole time. These young women are incredible, resilient, beautiful people that have experienced really difficult things, and I feel so lucky to have been allowed to just be on this trip as a volunteer, with lots of room to be silly and share riddles and jokes and connect as a person closer in age to them than the rest of the staff. We spent the first 6 days hiking around Moreton Island, off the coast of Brisbane. These days involved many hours of walking along the beach with our packs, which could be difficult at times but not really, and besides the view made it an awesome experience regardless of whether or not the bruises on my hips were jabbed by my pack with each step. During these hikes, we'd be having awesome conversations with each of the girls, getting to know them on a very deep level and relating to them about our own lives. Every afternoon or evening there was a group process circle around a campfire, where we'd talk about things like body image, sex and relationships, parents, and goals for the future. I'm in awe of the 3 psychologists on the trip who were essentially doing therapy nonstop from the moment they woke up to the moment they fell asleep every single day. On top of the group processes, they were doing individual therapy with these young women whenever they could, and the outcomes I witnessed even from Day 1 to Day 10 is astounding. These girls were learning how to embrace themselves with compassion, learn to lean on others for support and guidance, trust themselves, talk about some traumatic things for the first time, be silly, and learn what deep and meaningful connections could be like. Even in this huge paragraph of describing what I'd seen happening with the participants, I'm still barely even skimming the surface of just how much of an impact this experience had on them, and me. After being on this expedition and attending the AABAT forum, I've becoming much more attached to the idea of therapy needing to be outdoors. These girls experienced incredible transformation over a period of 10 days and nights in the bush compared with months or even years of therapy in an office getting them nowhere! The expedition involves so much more than the therapy session itself, which is why (I think) it's so effective. It's filled with physical challenges providing opportunities for examining mental processes, a group of similar aged people going through similar shitty stuff, delicious food, learning responsibilities through camp jobs like setting up hygiene stations, prepping and cooking food, cleaning up camp, setting up shelters, making fires, etc. Literally all the benefits of watching a sunset, laughing with friends, cooking your own food from healthy ingredients, sitting around a campfire having deep conversations, having a good cry, individual therapy, group therapy, swimming in the ocean, and sleeping under the stars- all rolled into one! This is magical! 

I took this picture on night 3! INCROYABLE. 

It's me (: Hadn't showered for 5 days at this point, but whatevs. 

Break time! 

One of the psychologists and a participant chatting away. 

Ingrid (adventure guide) and a participant examining a soaked backpack after the tide came up much higher than expected while we were chilling on the beach. 

 Playing a game during a break from hiking. 

A participant sharing her River of Life story. This was a really special activity on Day 6, each participant spent around an hour using items they found from nature to help them narrate their life story- each item represents an important person or memory or event in their life. Then they all shared their stories with the group. This was a really powerful therapeutic tool. And it revolves around the concept of narrativity in therapy, which interestingly is what I wrote my philosophy thesis on! Funny how things always loop back around. 

This is my River of Life. I didn't share my story with the group because of time constraints, but I did get to spend an hour working on it. Even just coming up with it, choosing the items from nature I wanted to represent each thing was really an emotional process. See if you can guess what each item represents! 

A participant and Andy talking.

One of the psychologists talking to a participant about the things the participant wants to continue from before the expedition and what she wants to change. 

One of our sailing boats on the way to our final campsite on Day 9! They're traditional wooden sailboats.  

Before I forget- I saw so many animals! Bandicoots were raiding our camp the first night, I walked alongside the dolphins that just hang out next to the island, watched whales in the distance, swam with a bunch of stingrays after climbing up and down giant sand dunes, and came across literally hundreds of starfish and thousands of soldier crabs. Fun fact, Moreton Island is a sand island, made up of 98% sand and 2% rock, and it's huge! It's the third largest sand island in the world, the other two are right nearby too. I went snorkeling around a shipwreck off an island that used to be an old leper colony, and it was AMAZING. 

I didn't realize this until midway through, but our expedition trip started the same day that incoming freshman arrived on campus to start their Hamilton experience this year. I'd been an orientation trip leader while at Hamilton, and it was strange to have this kind of parallel experience of leading a trip in Australia, sharing riddles and games I'd remembered from the orientation trips, and also missing that feeling of stepping back onto College Hill for the fall semester. I miss Hamilton, and I miss my Hamily. The first day of classes at Hamilton was the day our expedition ended, and I felt a little wrench in my gut when I thought about all the things I was going to miss about being there, especially during the first few weeks of classes. It's hard traveling alone and being so disconnected from what I'm used to being my life. I'm having a fantastic time, but there are still moments where I just wish I weren't alone, and I know that's normal. Don't want you all to think that I'm out here having ONLY good experiences, I've got my mix of less-than-good ones too, but I don't think they're worth sharing about on this blog (: 

So, now the trip is ended and I am in Byron Bay for the next few days to get a chance to be a tourist and relax and stuff. I'm not really sure what to do with myself right now, but I'll go to Brisbane in the middle of next week and chat to some people about their work with the outdoors and mental health, and then in a few weeks I'm going to Melbourne! Shout out to Liz and Caleb for letting me stay with them (:  I will be back in Mullumbimby on September 22nd for the expedition reunion, where we'll do another overnight camping trip and show a bunch of the photos we took during the expedition, which I'm in charge of putting together while traveling.
Alright, that's all for me because I'm tired! Give me a comment or something so I know what you think about my latest adventures. <3

-Andi