Teaching in the White Mountains

October 4, 2005
In the White Mountains with My 8th Grade Students

On our first afternoon, at the base of the mountain we were going to climb the next day, one of the Appalachian Mountain Club instructors played an interesting game. He had the kids pair off and tie themselves together, and their task was to figure out a way to release themselves without untying the knots. What I found intriguing was that Patrick, the instructor, told them, "It's a lot easier than you think." I said to myself, "Isn't that true of most problems?" At least in my experience, many seemingly complex problems have suddenly melted away, almost as if they never existed. After struggling mightily to "figure them out", in an instant -- poof! -- the problems were gone. I wonder if this means the problems were never actually real in the first place. Or -- a better way to put it -- maybe the problems existed only in my mind, and so they were able to disappear as fast as a passing thought does. This is a great lesson for the kids to learn -- that our problems are usually a lot more mental than physical. As they struggled to separate themselves in the chilly mountain air, I hope they finally realized, when the simple solution became clear, that most of their problems in life can slip away just as easily as this "unsolvable" rope problem did.