Philmont is a twelve day trip into the wilderness of New Mexico. It is a test of your crew and yourself. In many ways, the trip was easier and extremly harder than imagined. At first, I was regretting that I ever signed up for Philmont. I was half asleep when I was asked if I wanted to go. But by the end of the trek, I thought the opposite. The entire experience is filled with things that were....priceless.
First, I want to thank everyone in the trek for being there. The trip was hard, but would be impossible if the people around me weren’t there. Everyone being there was a strong moral support in my point of view. We had a fun when times were good, and helped me when times were bad. From cooking to getting lost, im very thankful for everyone.
The physical part of the trip was actually pretty easy. Though there were maybe three or four days that were 10 mile hikes, most of the trek were days of light hikes with activities. The activities there included branding, spar poling, rock climbing, and black powder, my favorite. However what really got to us the weather, this is one of the sole reasons why I fear going back. When it rains, you cannot cook or set up camp. Once that first raindrops hits the ground, ou have at most five minutes to get on raingear,before the sun disappears and the world in front of you turns wet. The weather is very dynamic. It can be peaceful and then suddenly, the sky becomes dark and you hear thunder. Once we ran into a rainstorm, and lightening hit right to the side of us.
Philmont put us and our equipment to the limit. Though our best resource was Paul, our ranger. In two days, Paul taught us how to survive. He taught us how to bearbag and what not to do. When he left, we noticed that if we did not pay attention, Philmont would eat us up alive. Another asset to Philmont is that there are no flushable toilets. They are made of wood and smell like poo. There was a box/toilet that had hundreds of maggots crawling around the inside and around the seat.
After Philmont, I think turned from a crew to a team where every member contributed. We learned to be tougher and how to survive. I think we cannot learn this in any other situation. W can only learn this much when we are thrown into the wild with limited resources. We learned a lot about each other and about ourselves. The memories I had there I will never forget, and the experiences I will always treasure. Philmont is a wonderful place, but when I was there, I had never missed home so much.
