David Hughes has been involved at internationally traveling, kayaking high schools for 13 years, first as a teacher and coach at The Academy at Adventure Quest, and then as the founder, director, coach and teacher for The New River Academy. What does that mean? When mere mortals come home after a long, long trip in a foreign land, we get to unpack and put our feet up for a while, indulging in the safety and comfort of home after so long away. While we are doing this, David Hughes is still in Chile, wrapping up the final logistics, putting things away, cleaning up, returning the gear we’ve borrowed. As soon as he gets home, he is immediately piecing together another trip. He is at home in West Virginia, at his lovely home with Fern the cat, for a few months at at time before he’s off again. To sustain this for 13 years, David must tap into reservoirs of strength, determination and energy that I cannot begin to fathom.
What does it mean to be the director of a program? We all work hard here, students and staff alike. But to be the director means that when the rest of the staff are taking a much-deserved break and watching Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince (like we did yesterday) David is standing out in the rain, directing the driveway gravelers with one hand and meeting with a furniture maker at the same time (like he did yesterday). When we are recovering after a 16 hour drive home from Ottawa to West Virginia, he is waking up at dawn and driving 10 of our creek boats to South Carolina so we will be able to save some money on shipping.
I do not know how he does what he does. The flurry of activity that we see on the surface is only the tip of the iceburg. He is working while we sleep in on Saturdays, he is working when we crash early on a Thursday night. While we’re all indulging in facebook and gmail, he’s working out payroll and hammering out 1,000 emails to our next Chilean contact. I cannot begin to mention even a fraction of what he does, because I’m not even aware of all that he does!
Yesterday night, we realized there had been a miscommunication with our cook. It was 7:30, we were hungry, and she was no where to be seen! I snapped to attention, grabbed the girls and drove us into town. We navigated through the supermarket with our fragmented spanish, then ran home and furiously cooked up a pretty decent. The french fries didn’t work out too well, but overall our ‘scrambled egg french fry suprise’ was well received. We thought up, shopped for, cooked up, serve, ate and cleaned up meal for 14 in the time it would previously take me to cook up a bowl of spaghetti for myself . I was so proud of myself! And then it dawned on me, like a baseball to the side of the head: this is what David does every minute of every day. He navigates 14 of us through a foreign country, aranges the meals, the shopping, the vehicles, the shuttles, the rivers, the put-ins, the shelter, the currency, the budget, leads the meetings…of course, we’re all there to help him, but because he is in Charge, the details eventually filter up to David for his final decision. And somehow he finds the time to read every blog post the students put up, and compliment the little things he loves so much (like Matti Hill mentioning how he ‘pulled himself up by the booty straps.’ Love it!)
About a week ago, the whole crew was sitting around the fire at our lodge in Achibueno. There was rain outside and steam on the windows. The students were playing Uno, Tino and Andy and I were singing, and Matt Smink was reading The Monkey Wrench Gang, having snatched a copy from my American Literature students. David was quietly sitting back. He had been quiet for a long time when I asked him if anything was wrong.
“Wrong? No.” He said, leaning forwards and extending his hands out towards the fire. “I’m just taking a moment to sit back and absorb what I’ve worked for. You know how that goes?”
If there is anything I can hope for David, it is that his life from here on out is full of moments like this one. That he takes the time to sit back and appreciate all the lives he has changed, all the beautiful and fantastic moments that have arisen from his efforts.
