Seventy-Six Trombones in the Classroom

There’s a place in The Music Man where Professor Harold Hill’s band finally has to perform. For months, taught by a con man who knows nothing of music, they’ve been picturing themselves as musicians, imagining the songs that will pour forth from their instruments.

As the people of River City gather, we all wait for what’s going to happen. Finally, the band members lift their trumpets and trombones. And out comes… not music, exactly, but something – a series of toots and squeaks that vaguely resembles “Seventy-Six Trombones.”

I’d like to think I’m a better teacher than “Professor” Hill, but there comes a time when my students have to perform on their own. When we design Student Learning Outcomes, we start with a “Given—”: “Given a musical score,” a Music SLO might read, “students will be able to play ‘Seventy-Six Trombones’ with acceptable accuracy.”

In English, it’s hard to come up with a good “Given—.” In my department, we go round and round, trying to define our expectations in measurable terms. But sometimes I think our goals should be more honest: “Given a blank sheet of paper, students will be able to write an essay that’s brilliant and perceptive.”

That’s what we expect them to do, after all: produce something out of nothing. We hold their hands, we give them all the help we can… but ultimately, they’re on their own. They have to write their own stories. All we can do is sit back and hope they’ve learned something – and watch as those first squeaky sentences appear on the screen.

Eagle Lake - 10,000 feet

When I told a colleague about my Sunday hike to Eagle Lake, he asked me what was most impressive. “Getting there at all,” I told him. That trail is never easy.

The first time I hiked it was in 2006, my first full summer in California. My daughter was working in Wyoming that year, and to do our annual mother–daughter backpacking trip, I needed to be fit enough for high-altitude hiking. I therefore chose a training hike that would reach the highest elevation in the fewest miles – Eagle Lake, at 10,000 feet, just 3.5 miles from the Mineral King parking lot at 7,800.

It was a gorgeous hike, but even the early switchbacks were difficult, and for the last half mile to the lake – through the trees after the trail traverses a wall of boulders – I stopped every few feet to breathe and force myself on. What’s more, coming down killed my toes – over the next month, both big toenails came off, and I couldn’t wear boots for the rest of the summer.

This didn’t stop me hiking. We still did our Wind River trip, but I traveled those whole three days in Chaco sandals… and I never did lose that light-headed feeling. And ever since, I’ve carried the sandals, just in case I need to save my toes.

I’d been up the Eagle Lake trail a couple times since, but each time, the altitude slowed me down. If I reached the lake at all, I’d collapse at the first viewpoint, eat my lunch, and stagger slowly down.

This Sunday, I wasn’t sure what would happen. The lower White Chief trail had been rough the weekend before, but hiking up the valley the next morning, I’d felt better.

Halfway up, I met a local woman who was just as slow as I was – and like me, she was looking at plants. We hiked the middle part of the trail together, stopping for penstemon and shooting stars, and I didn’t even notice the switchbacks. It was a pleasant encounter, and it reminded me of something I’ve long believed – Go where you want to go, and you’ll meet the people you want to meet.

Heading up the boulders on my own, I expected the usual problems. But reaching the lake, I felt so good I kept going. The sky was overcast, with thunder threatening from beyond the snowy peaks, but the lake reflected snowfields and interesting patterns of clouds.

At the far end of the lake, the pass seemed surprisingly close. “I could do that,” I told myself, mentally plotting a course across the rocks. But a solo climb above 10,600 feet wasn’t really very feasible.

Instead, I ate my cheese and crackers by the lake. After a while, I headed down, stopping to find the yellow columbines I knew were hidden in the boulders.

Eventually, I drove down the curves toward home, tired but satisfied – and ready to teach my 7 AM class the next morning.

On Pushing Myself to Hike

I awoke to the sound of a gentle snore – my own. I’d sat down for a brief rest along the Franklin Lakes trail, and there I was, dozing against a tree trunk.

This was the very trail I’d hiked with my daughter a few years earlier, when the altitude hit me the same way. Once we’d started up the switchbacks, I’d found myself repeatedly stopping to yawn, the yawns expanding almost to sleep. We’d meant to camp at Franklin Lake; instead, we made it just to the intersection. In the morning, waking to a frosting of new snow (it was October), we stowed our loads behind a rock and continued up to the lake at 10,000 feet.

Now I was hoping to repeat the same hike. Without a big pack, it should have been easy – but it wasn’t. Altitude struck at just the same place. Eventually I made it to where we’d camped, but that was as far as I could go.

Coming down, able to think more clearly, I found myself wondering what pushes me to keep going. Why, when it was so difficult to hike, was I not home watching television like everyone else?

By the time I reached the car, I’d written a whole essay about it. But apparently that’s as far as I got – it never reached the page.

That was a year ago. This past weekend, I hiked to White Chief Meadow, and I found myself re-writing the same essay in my head. Once again, the altitude hit me before 8,500 feet. Altitude isn’t really a matter of fitness – even the most athletic hiker can be affected. I’m never fast, but I do have strong legs and lungs. And yet, there I was, stopping for no reason, trying to convince myself to take another step.

Eventually I reached my favorite juniper, precariously perched on the ridge, and around the corner was the meadow. I’d reached 9,000 feet. As before, it was easier coming down.

And already, I’m planning the next hike. Can I go a little higher? Maybe. And maybe one day I’ll make it over the passes into the “real” high country.

How I Became a Teacher

I never meant to be a teacher. True, I grew up around university professors – everybody’s daddy taught college – but it wasn’t something I ever meant to do. Maybe I’d do science research (thus the Botany degree), but I never really thought about teaching.

In August of 1996, my sister and I were backpacking with our younger children in the Oregon Cascades. It rained. It always rained when we camped with those two – maybe that’s why my younger daughter is now an English major. (The older one, the one who hiked in the sunshine, became a botanist.)

As we sat under our tarps and watched the rain, my sister said she’d be starting a Master’s degree that fall – maybe she’d end up teaching. I couldn’t possibly teach, I told her. I wouldn’t know how.

Yet even while I claimed I couldn’t do it, I pictured myself giving this explanation to a class full of students. Gradually, it began to seem possible. And within three weeks, I was signed up for classes at the same university.

But while my sister was able to move from her Bachelor’s to a Master’s degree, my route was less direct. I couldn’t see myself teaching biology, imparting knowledge to an eager class. What I could imagine was something more interactive – teaching writing. I’d worked as a science editor for six years, and I’d always been a voracious reader. What could be more natural than being an English teacher? “I’d like to teach high school English,” I told the admissions officer.

“You need an English degree for that,” she told me. And by the end of September, I was starting a second Bachelor’s degree. I was forty-five years old.

After three years for the BA – where excellent professors urged me to teach at the college level – and another two for a Master’s, I taught locally at two universities and a community college for several years. But while I loved the work, I wasn’t making it financially. And it seemed clear that a part-timer would never be viewed as a “real teacher.”

At the beginning of 2005, I had a revelation: My life wasn’t working. What I needed was a full-time job, a job with enough pay to live on and enough time to write. Even if it meant moving far from home – alone.

That spring, I blanketed the west with resumes. The applications were laborious; I couldn’t write more than two or three each weekend. Consequently, I limited them to colleges where I thought I could actually live. Twenty applications led to five interviews, along with quick visits to the Olympic Mountains, the Rockies, the Sierras, and the desert east of San Diego.

In the end, I was offered one job. After a grueling summer of packing up the house – with a lot of help from family and a friend – I loaded everything into a 26-foot U-Haul and drove to California. I landed at a community college in one of the state’s most impoverished counties… with one of the nation’s finest national parks in my back yard.

Lying by the pool at that first apartment, I looked up past the green leaves and red tiled roofs to brilliant blue sky. “I’ve left it all behind,” I told myself. And for the moment, it seemed enough.

On Being a Writer

Half a lifetime ago, I took a non-credit creative writing class through a local community college. I still have the introduction I wrote for that class:

If I were eight or eighty, I might know for sure that I wasn’t meant to be a writer. At eight I could have chosen to be something else. At eighty I’ll know I’ve succeeded or failed. As it is, I’m thirty, and the time between writing phases, no matter how long they are, can always be counted as gathering experience or learning to write. My life is constantly being re-written as a story in my head.

Nearly thirty years on, I’m still wondering whether I’m a writer. I write. I write letters and journals and story ideas and creative teaching handouts. I’ve started unfinished novels, a children’s book, an African memoir, a book on teaching, and several essays. I’ve written two short stories that feel finished, and a dozen more that don’t. So, does that make me a writer? Or do I need to be published for anything to count?

I am published, of course. I have two short bird papers in Malimbus, the Journal of the West African Ornithological Society – the smallest of small publications. I’m listed as an editor on a forestry publication or two.

Maybe keeping a blog is the next step. At least I’ll have to finish an idea, rather than letting it languish in my files. Would that feel like publishing? I don’t know, but I think I’ll try it for a while.

Flying Over the Sierras

I was flying over the Sierras toward a conference in Boston when I had one of those revelations that make one reassess one’s life.

Looking down at that snowed-in mountain landscape, I wanted to be there. During that first year in California, I’d made it into the “foothills” – up to 10,000 feet – but I hadn’t really been into those mountains. The trails were too long, the passes too high.

I’d always wanted to walk the whole Pacific Crest Trail, Mexico to Canada. I’d hiked little segments – five days here, three days there – but a part of me still wanted to go the whole 2,650 miles. But I was fifty-five, short and round and usually the slowest person on the trail. People who passed me going up were often surprised, going down, to find me still plodding up the hill. Probably I wouldn’t become miraculously fit within the next few years. Maybe hiking the whole Crest Trail wasn’t really very realistic.

And then, as one does on long cross-country flights, I thought about other dreams. Would I ever earn a PhD? My dad had a PhD; my mom earned her Master’s when I was a teen. My own MA came at fifty, and then I faced a choice: either go for a PhD, or find a job before it was time to retire. I went for the money. At fifty-four, I became a full-time English teacher at a community college in California. If I want full retirement benefits, I’ll have to work till I’m eighty-four. Am I likely to try for a PhD? Probably not. And anyway, I don’t really need one.

But if mega-hikes and a PhD were out of the question, there were other dreams. I’d always seen myself as a writer. And I’d always written, but I hadn’t produced the Great American Novel. Still, writers mature with age. Maybe writing was the way to go.

It’s interesting that in this analysis, I didn’t ponder teaching. Maybe that’s because I already taught. Or maybe it’s that teaching was never my life-long goal; I came to it almost by accident. And though teaching college is the most rewarding work I’ve ever done, a part of me still demands more.

So, writing it would be, I concluded, as the snow gave way to desert below the plane. And for the rest of the trip, I planned my career as a writer.

But it hasn’t quite worked out that way. I write, but only in fits and spurts. When the weekend comes, I grade papers… or go to the mountains. I’m unlikely to hike the whole Crest Trail, but I still want to reach those High Sierra lakes. While hiking – and even while teaching – I think about writing. But it’s hard to write when you aren’t actually facing a computer. And many days, I’d rather go for a hike.

On What I Would Have Asked My Dad

(July 3rd). Today – exactly 32 years since my father died – I’m grading essays. The assignment was to interview someone significant and write an essay about that person. “The interview opened many doors of silence,” one student wrote, saying that his father now “tries to bring up conversations at the dinner table.” It’s comments like these that keep me re-assigning this essay.

Looking back, I remember my own silent mornings, riding along with my dad till he’d drop me near the high school and head for his university job. Each of us wanted to talk, but neither knew what to say. Why didn’t someone give me an assignment like this? What would I have asked if I’d been given that nudge?

I wonder whether I’d have known then – less than a decade before he would die – the right questions to ask. What was it like to be a husband, the father of children? How did his teaching affect his life? He was an Oceanography professor – these days, I teach college English myself. Yet back then, I never dreamed I’d go in that direction.

And there’s another question I often suggest: “Is there anything else I should have asked you?” How would he have answered that question, I wonder?