I decided to join Grand County Search and Rescue.  It’s an all-volunteer group and they provide training for free.  I started going to the regular Wednesday night trainings.  At some point I was told that I would have a mentor to help me with training.  But I have been going to trainings for almost 2 months and I feel very lost and don’t have a mentor to ask questions of.  The trainings aren’t geared toward newcomers.  They are more like refresher courses for people that have been on Search and Rescue for a while.  They are full of words I don’t know, processes, and acronyms.  I feel dumber each time I go.

Then one night I get there and everyone is in snow gear for the strategic shoveling practice.  Apparently, there is an email group that everyone uses to share information, information like, show up in your snow gear because we will be out in the snow for training tonight.  I am not on the email list so I was in jeans and clogs – no where near ready for snow activities.  I felt so left out, so useless, and generally defeated. I tried to watch the training, but soon my shoes were full of snow, my feet were wet and I was shivering.  I lost feeling in my feet and hands and went home crying.  What am I doing here?

It kicked up all sorts of “poor me” issues I have.  The adult in me knows I just need to ask for what I need, but the child in me says, “if they wanted me on the team, I’d be on the email list and have a mentor”.  It’s the old “If you loved me, I wouldn’t have to ask for what I need” game.  No one ever wins that game.  But the battle between child game and adult reason went on for days.  I finally gave up the game and sent an email to the training director telling him I was lost and had no one to ask questions of and that I wasn’t getting emails that would be helpful to know what was expected of me.  It didn’t make me feel better, I felt worse.

Tonight, I still felt defeated and there was a tinge of poor me hanging out, so it was difficult to drag myself to training.  I sat down and immediately Rose came over to me and said “I’m going to be your mentor.  We are going to have so much fun”.  She got my phone number and we made a plan to meet up and go over what I needed to do next and answer the questions I have so far.  Rose is my age, full of so much energy, and just seems like a delightful person.  We ARE going to have so much fun.

This is the first training I left when it wasn’t a blizzard.  As I was driving east, I could see the outline of the mountains, illuminated by a faint glow of orange behind them.  It was a dark night and the mountains would not be visible if it wasn’t for the glow behind them.  It was kind of like impending sunrise, but it was 8:00pm.  Or like a forest fire had set the distant mountains a blaze.  I pulled over and looked at a map.  I was directly west of Boulder.  Boulder is about 30 miles west of where I was, on the other side of the Continental Divide, unreachable by car.  The orange glow was light pollution from Boulder.  Even though it is pollution from a world I am trying to leave behind, it was a very beautiful sight and a great end to the evening.