Parker Woodworth
Make the outdoors your classroom. Breathe in the salt air and watch the sunrise as you get ready for a day of sea kayaking. Listen for the call of the kea mountain parrot as you backpack through New Zealand’s rugged mountains and lush valleys. Learn to travel on snow and ice while traversing rugged peaks and sweeping snowfields. Paddle a canoe through whitewater rapids and spectacular river gorges. Meet members of a local Maori community at a marae, or meetinghouse, and learn about their way of life, past and present.
On this semester, learn to live and travel outdoors with minimum impact while exploring a rich variety of landscapes, from high mountain passes and craggy peaks to lush rainforests and quiet coves. Develop lifelong outdoor skills, which may include sea kayaking, backpacking, canoeing, and mountaineering.
As you gain confidence on the water and in the mountains, identify and hone your personal leadership style. Trying an activity like sea kayaking for the first time might be your opportunity to develop self-awareness and discover a lifelong love of the ocean. Leading your team across challenging mountain terrain might be a pivotal moment in learning effective communication and tolerance for adversity. At the end of your course, head home with deep friendships, lasting memories, and the skills to lead in the wilderness and beyond.
“It seems nearly impossible to put into words how much my time at NOLS meant to me. NOLS allows us to do things we would never get to do and be people we never thought we could be. It removes us from the tedious distractions of every day life, it teaches us things that we could never learn in a classroom, and in turn, we learn more about ourselves than we had ever known before.”
