Memoirs of an Outdoor Life: The Great Toothpaste Incident
The forest has been my classroom for most of my adult life. The rivers and trails, the wind in the trees, and the smell of campfire smoke are as familiar to me as the pages of a well-worn textbook might be to a traditional teacher. Long before GPS, cell phones, and satellite tracking became commonplace, I was guiding youth into the wilderness—giving them the gift of wild spaces and showing them that confidence, resilience, and joy can be found far from the comforts of the modern world.
One of my earliest—and most vivid—memories of this life happened in the early 2000s, during a multi-day canoe trip I was leading with a group of young people. It was one of those fresh groups: nervous but eager, each kid clutching a paddle with white knuckles like it was both a sword and a crutch. Most had never stepped foot in a canoe before. Most didn’t know how to tie a proper knot, and none of them had yet developed the subtle balance between independence and teamwork that backcountry travel requires. But they tried, and for me, that effort is always the most beautiful part.
The day had started with promise. We’d launched from a quiet dock on a glassy lake surrounded by towering pines. The air was warm, the sun shone through the canopy like a spotlight on a natural stage. As we moved downriver, the current picked up but remained gentle—just enough to keep the kids on their toes without throwing them into panic. I paddled near the back of the convoy, keeping an eye on everyone. That’s where I’m most comfortable: guiding from behind, letting them lead until they need help.
We had barely been on the water for more than an hour when I noticed something strange out of the corner of my eye. Off to the right, near the shore, I saw a canoe slowly drifting sideways, rotating lazily in the current. Inside, a young boy—probably about twelve—was paddling enthusiastically. The only problem was, he was facing the wrong way. His back was to the front of the canoe, and he was paddling as though trying to row the boat in reverse.
I scanned the shoreline, wondering where his partner was. And then I saw him—another boy, roughly the same age, jogging along the riverbank, parallel to the drifting canoe. He wasn’t yelling, wasn’t panicking, just trotting through the underbrush like it was the most natural thing in the world to abandon your vessel mid-expedition.
Puzzled—and truthfully trying not to laugh—I paddled over to intercept.
“What happened here?” I asked as I gently angled my canoe between them.
The boy in the canoe looked at me sheepishly. “He left,” he said, nodding toward the boy on shore.
“I did not just leave,” the boy on land protested as he slowed to a halt. “I saw something on the ground.”
“What could possibly be so interesting that you abandoned your canoe mid-river?”
“It was… a tube of toothpaste.”
There was a pause. I looked at him to see if he was joking. He wasn’t.
“I thought maybe someone dropped it,” he added, defensive. “I wanted to check it out.”
I tried to suppress a grin. “So, instead of asking your partner to hold the canoe or beach it properly, you jumped out to investigate this rogue tube of toothpaste?”
“Well… yeah.”
“And while you were gone, the canoe spun around in the current, and now your buddy here is paddling in circles.”
They both nodded. It was such an honest, bizarre moment that I couldn’t help but shake my head and chuckle. It was exactly the kind of chaos that happens when you take kids into the wild. Plans go sideways. Canoes do too. People make decisions based on things like abandoned toiletries.
I helped guide the drifting canoe back to shore and reunited the duo. With a quick lesson on the importance of teamwork—and a quiet internal promise to never pack minty-fresh distractions near the launch site again—we were back on our way.
But that moment stuck with me, and over the years it has come to represent something larger.
In the outdoors, things don’t always go as planned. Kids make odd decisions. Canoes separate. People face the current alone, or find themselves running through the woods for reasons only they understand. But in those moments, we learn. We adapt. We grow. That boy in the canoe learned how to handle a boat solo, even if just for a little while. The boy on the shore learned the value of communication—and maybe, just maybe, that not everything on the forest floor is worth chasing.
These are the stories I carry with me—not because they’re dramatic or epic, but because they’re real. They reflect what it means to teach outside of four walls, to guide people not only through forests but through moments of self-discovery and misadventure. And they remind me that sometimes the best lessons come from the smallest events—like a drifting canoe and a rogue tube of toothpaste.
Years later, I sometimes wonder where those two boys are now. Maybe one’s a forest ranger. Maybe one’s a dentist. Either way, I hope they remember that day as fondly as I do.
And me? I’ll keep writing these stories down before they vanish like campfire smoke. Because this life—the life of teaching in the outdoors—is too rich to leave undocumented. And sometimes, it’s the absurdities that leave the deepest impression.