This story update is part of theÌęșÚÁÏłÔčÏÍűÌę°ä±ôČčČőČőŸ±łŠČő, a series highlighting the best writing we’ve ever published, along with author interviews and other exclusive bonus materials. Read “The Same River Twice,” by David Quammen,Ìęhere.

In the grainy Zoom window, I see Quammen’s walls of shelves, heaving with books, and also a large, empty glass tank.

“I’m in here with Boots the python,” he says, as if it’s totally banal to share office space with a large snake. “That’s his tank.”

Ah, the tank is not empty. That’s cool. And a little terrifying.

“Oh, he’s a sweetheart,” Quammen says. “My wife, Betsy, came downstairs one day about five years ago and said, ‘Don’t get mad at me, but—’ You know how those conversations begin. Betsy says, ‘Don’t get mad at me, but I’ve adopted a python.’ Betsy and I are snake people. I said, ‘What species?’ That’s kind of what passes for our collaborative decision-making.”

Boots is a “very gentle” ball python, Quammen says. “He, like most of our dogs and like the cat, is a rescue.” When Quammen lets Boots crawl around the office, the snake will sometimes slither up and into hidden spaces in the shelves.

“Their favorite habitat is rocky walls. A ball python can go into a niche in a cliff or a mud bank and wedge itself in there like a ball, and it makes it hard for a leopard or a baboon to pull it out and eat it. Boots wedges himself in my bookshelf, and I have to delicately figure out: Which book do I take out next in a way that does not hurt him, bend any of his scales in the wrong direction, to loosen him up a little bit? Eventually, he just sort of falls into my hands.

“He’s only bitten me once, and it was by accident. He was very embarrassed.”

We digress, perhaps. But a conversation with Quammen always contains multitudes: Darwinism, connubial negotiation and bliss, dedication to the literary and the true, and a fierce and gregarious curiosity, with Montana often in the wings. Let’s digress a bit more: had he not bought a used Volkswagen bus in England, and had George McGovern won the U.S. presidency in 1972, it’s very possible Quammen might never have ended up in Montana at all.

He grew up in Cincinnati and got into Yale, where he studied literature and wrote a novel, . He then won a Rhodes Scholarship and headed off to Oxford to earn a graduate degree, writing his thesis on the works of William Faulkner. He obtained the VW bus with money earned from the novel. But in May 1972, Quammen recalls, Richard Nixon ordered the mining of Haiphong Harbor in Vietnam, and “within about 24 hours I left the Rhodes without permission and came back to the U.S. to work for McGovern’s [anti-war] campaign. After McGovern was squashed in November, I promptly went back to England and found that the head of the Rhodes Scholarships hadn’t written me off.”

Quammen got his Oxford degree and then convinced his friend Dennis to ship the VW to a dockyard in New York. Following an unsatisfying stint in Berkeley, California, Quammen decided to drive the bus “to Montana, filled with Penguin Classics and a portable electric typewriter. And a very cheap fly rod, which I soon ran over and replaced with a better cheap fly rod. I arrived in Missoula on September 12, 1973. A significant day in my life.”

OUTSIDE: I came to work at the magazine the year after you wrote “The Same River Twice.” I don’t know if you remember, I was your fact-checker back in those days. I read this essay, and from that moment on I loved your writing. The bones of the story have everything to do with how you came to șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű.
QUAMMEN: In 1981, Steve Byers, E. Jean Carroll, and I were all trying to break into magazine writing from Ennis, Montana, the little town we were living in. I was 33; they were a few years older. We heard that the editor of șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű magazine was coming to Montana to schmooze with writers, and we thought it’d be great if we could get a shot at meeting that guy and pitch stories to him.

From a phone booth in Bozeman, with a handful of quarters, I cold-called șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű in Chicago and asked for John Rasmus, editor in chief. My heart was racing. I was nervous. My mission was to say, “If you come to Ennis, Steve and I will take you fly-fishing on the Madison River.”

This young, casual voice comes on the line: “Hi, this is John.” I say, “Hi, John Rasmus. You don’t know me.” I do my little spiel, and he says, “Oh, OK. Cool.”

Steve and I taught him to cast a fly line in my side yard. Then we took him fishing, and we made sure that he caught some fish. By about sunset on this stretch of the Madison, he was landing a 16-inch rainbow trout.

We took him back to the farmhouse where Steve and Jean lived, and we cooked steaks and drank whiskey. By the end of the evening, we were all best friends. At some point I said: I got a story idea for you. I want to write a piece about what’s good about mosquitoes. John said, “Is anything good?” But in the sober light of day he said, “I’m assigning this to you, right?” I mailed the essay off in a manila envelope and thought, What’s going to happen?

What happened was he accepted it and offered you a job as columnist for a slot already known as Natural Acts.
That was the only time, I think, that I ever actually pitched șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű an idea. After that I’d just send him a piece, usually on time, but at the last minute: “Here’s an essay on sea cucumbers.” “Here’s an essay on giant Pacific octopus.” “Here’s an essay on why crows get bored.” Which is because they’re too intelligent for their station in life.

When I was doing the column, I tended always to look for some kind of synergy between elements that were unexpectedly combined, but when you put them together
 well, son of a gun. I had taken some courses in zoology at the University of Montana when I lived in Missoula. I had taken a course in entomology, another one in aquatic entomology, and another one in ichthyology. I was interested in how spring creeks worked, the fact that they maintain a constant temperature and therefore have a 12-months-of-the-year growing season and can be very productive. This creek behind Steve and Jean’s house was a spring creek.

And then Steve and Jean came to an end. I had so revered their union that, when they split, it gutted me. Then, several years later, I was noodling up a column.

I had that spring creek idea, but it was only half of a column. I needed another half. I needed the yang to that yin. That creek that I fished on with Steve, and the end of their marriage and the end of our special moment, the three of us in that town, became the yang of this piece. I always thought of that time as—there’s a wonderful sentence at the very end of , Ernest Hemingway’s memoir of Paris. He says, “This is how Paris was in the early days when we were very poor and very happy.”

One thing I enjoy about the essay is that there are no identifiers—I don’t know where it is except that it’s in Montana. As I reread it recently, I thought about how we are now so information saturated. This piece is almost allegorical—the opposite of online culture.
It’s a very particular, very personal story, but I wanted it to have some sort of universal dimension. I wanted it to have legs. I want to give myself credit for an instinct that not naming the town, not naming the people, not naming the specifics would give it a little bit of permanence. I was describing science with great care and, I hope, precision, but also connecting it with things that were very unscientific—either artistic or simply emotional.

I love that șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű was a place where you could do that, and everybody had the good sense to keep letting you do it.
I did between 152 and 155 columns, something like that. All those wonderful people at șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű just letting me do any damn crazy thing, as long as I could make it work and get it in on time. It was a fool’s paradise.

But you started out wanting to write fiction, right?
I wanted to be a novelist. I had taken one science course in college, a biology course, and it was not a good biology course. Didn’t even mention Charles Darwin.

I discovered Faulkner when I was a sophomore at Yale, and I became obsessed with his work. I studied him with a great teacher and a great friend to me, Robert Penn Warren, who knew Faulkner, and who was himself a southerner and a towering American man of letters. When I was a senior, I was rewriting what became my first published novel, To Walk the Line.

But I was a middle-class white male from a happy childhood in Ohio. The world didn’t need that guy to be a novelist. When I got to Montana I started reading nonfiction. Voraciously.ÌęFor the first time.

What prompted you to do that?
I had always been interested in the natural world, but I had been in New Haven and then Oxford—not places where the natural world is very strongly present. I got to Montana, and I got back to the natural world. I was interested in feeling the cold and the snow and feeling the flow of the rivers. But also, I was interested in thinking about it. I was interested in ecology and evolutionary biology. I started reading Darwin. I started reading Heraclitus. I started reading Herodotus. I started reading Jean-Jacques Rousseau. I started reading every which way: Loren Eiseley and J.B.S. Haldane and Mary Kingsley and Annie Dillard and others. And I saw people doing things with nonfiction that were every bit as creative and imaginative as fiction, and much more creative and imaginative than 97 percent of novels.

I want to ask about your books on pandemics, which are both highly literary and diligently reported. You were prescient on this topic, having published , your 2012 book about the rise in zoonotic diseases that transmit dangerously from animals to humans. A decade later came Breathless, in which you argue persuasively for the zoonotic theory of COVID-19 and against the theory that the virus escaped from a virology lab in Wuhan, China.ÌęÌęÌę
One story is the imagined story of a lab leak, and the other is the inferential story of a zoonotic spillover. There is a lot of empirical evidence to support but not finally prove the idea that COVID originated with a zoonotic spillover. There’s a whole historical and scientific context for that. There are pieces of immediate evidence that support that idea.

There’s no empirical evidence to support the lab story. But it is a very, very powerful, enticing story. And that is why it has legs, in my opinion. One of the things that they argue on that side is, “Well, if this came from a zoonotic spillover from a bat, why haven’t we found the original virus in the bat? It’s been four years now. That’s very suspicious.”

Well, no. The problem is they don’t know anything about the history of zoonotic diseases. With the Marburg virus, for example, it took 41 years to find the bat. With Ebola it’s been 48 years, and we still don’t have the answer. It is not mysterious that the last section of evidence in the structure of empirical support for zoonotic spillover of COVID hasn’t been found.

Are you working on a book now?
Yeah. My desk is covered with files, files, files, books, books, and files. I’m working on a book on cancer as an evolutionary phenomenon. I’ve been incubating this book for 17 years.

How is cancer evolutionary?
There is a school of thought that I stumbled across in 2006 or 2007 that says to understand cancer, you have to understand it from a Darwinian perspective. Every tumor is a population of cells. As a tumor begins, the cells start mutating more and more. As a tumor grows, it’s a population of cells that vary from one another with genetic variation. And they’re competing. They’re competing for space. They’re competing for blood. They’re competing for oxygen, for other resources that allow them to grow. And when you have a population of variant individuals competing for resources in order to survive and replicate themselves—does that sound familiar? You turn the crank and you have evolution by natural selection.

So why does chemo so often not work? An oncologist prescribes a drug, and I don’t know how much cancer you’ve experienced in your family or your life—

I had breast cancer, and my husband died of lymphoma.
All right. Ouch. Yes. So an oncologist says, “We’re going to treat this with chemo. This is a good drug.” And the chemo knocks down the cancer for six months or so. You get some improvement. And then the cancer becomes resistant to that drug, so you’re forced to use a different drug. Why does it become resistant? For the same reason that a field of grasshoppers becomes resistant to the insecticide DDT. You hit the grasshoppers with DDT one year. You kill off 99 percent of the grasshoppers, and 1 percent of the grasshoppers happen to have genetic resistance to DDT. Two years later, your field is filled with grasshoppers again. This is cancer as an evolutionary phenomenon.

If we live long enough and are lucky enough, we’ll all die of cancer. Lucky enough because it is a result of, among other things, but importantly, the cumulative number of cell divisions that you have. But here’s a question: Why do whales not get cancer?

Whales?
It’s a mystery. It’s called . Whales live a long time, and they have lots and lots of cells. Their cells are not larger than ours, they just have more of them. If you trace a linear curve, whales should be dying of cancer in early middle age, all of them, and they’re not.

Are there any tiny animals that don’t get cancer?
Yes. The naked mole rat, which lives in burrows in the Middle East. It has hardly any fur. It’s blind. It lives underground. A naked mole rat lives to be 20 or 30. A mouse lives to be two. There are cancer biologists who have whole colonies of naked mole rats and have been studying them for 40 years.

This conversation makes me want to be huge. Or very small.
Lisa, just remember: șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű in the 1980s, that’s what it was like, when we were very young and very happy.

The post How David Quammen’s Writing Career Was Influenced by his Time Fishing in Montana appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

You’re about to read one of theÌęșÚÁÏłÔčÏÍűÌę°ä±ôČčČőČőŸ±łŠČő, a series highlighting the best stories we’ve ever published, along with author interviews, where-are-they-now updates, and other exclusive bonus materials. Read Lisa Chase’s interview with David Quammen about this feature here.

He never founded a philosophic school, like Plato and Pythagoras did. He didn’t want followers. He simply wrote his one book and deposited the scroll in a certain sacred building, the temple of Artemis, where the general public couldn’t get ahold of it. The book itself was eventually lost, and all that survives of it today are about a hundred fragments, which have come down secondhand in the works of other ancient writers. So his ideas are known only by hearsay. He seems to have said a lot of interesting things, some of them cryptic, some of them downright ornery, but this river comment is the one for which Heraclitus is widely remembered. The full translation is: “You cannot step twice into the same river, for other waters are continually flowing on.” To most people it comes across as a nice resonant metaphor, a bit of philosophic poetry. To me it is that and more.

Once, for a stretch of years, I lived in a very small town on the bank of a famous Montana river. It was famous mainly for its trout, this river, and for its clear water and abundance of chemical nutrients, and for the seasonal blizzards of emerging insects that made it one of the most rewarding pieces of habitat in North America, arguably in the world, if you happened to be a trout or fly-fisherman. I happened to be a fly-fisherman.

One species of insect in particular—one “hatch,” to use the slightly misleading term that fishermen apply to these impressive entomological events, when a few billion members of some mayfly or stone fly or caddis fly species all emerge simultaneously into adulthood and take flight over a river—gave this river an unmatched renown. The species was Pteronarcys californica, a monstrous but benign stone fly that grew more than two inches long and carried a pinkish-orange underbelly for which it had gotten the common name salmonfly. These insects, during their three years of development as aquatic larvae, could survive only in a river that was cold, pure, fast-flowing, rich in dissolved oxygen, and covered across its flat bottom with boulders the size of bowling balls, among which the larvae would live and graze. The famous river offered all those conditions extravagantly, and so P. californica flourished there like it did nowhere else. Trout flourished in turn.

When the clouds of P. californica took flight, and mated in air, and then began dropping back onto the water, the fish fed upon them voraciously, recklessly. Wary old brown trout the size of a person’s thigh, granddaddy animals that would never otherwise condescend to feed by daylight upon floating insects, came up off the bottom for this banquet. Each gulp of P. californica was a nutritional windfall. The trout filled their bellies and their mouths and still continued gorging. Consequently, the so-called salmonfly so-called hatch on this river, occurring annually during two weeks in June, triggered by small changes in water temperature, became a wild and garish national festival in the fly-fishing year. Stockbrokers in New York, corporate lawyers in San Francisco, federal judges and star-quality surgeons and foundation presidents—the sort of folk who own antique bamboo fly rods and field jackets of Irish tweed—planned their vacations around this event. They packed their gear and then waited for the telephone signal from a guide in a shop on Main Street of the little town where I lived.

The signal would say: It’s started. Or, in more detail: Yeah, the hatch is on. Passed through town yesterday. Bugs everywhere. By now the head end of it must be halfway to Varney Bridge. Get here as soon as you can. They got here. Cab drivers and schoolteachers came too. People who couldn’t afford to hire a guide and be chauffeured comfortably in a Mackenzie boat, or who didn’t want to, arrived with dinghies and johnboats lashed to the roofs of old yellow buses. And if the weather held, and you got yourself to the right stretch of river at the right time, it could indeed be very damn good fishing.

But that wasn’t why I lived in the town. Truth be known, when P. californica filled the sky and a flotilla of boats filled the river, I usually headed in the opposite direction. I didn’t care for the crowds. It was almost as bad as the Fourth of July rodeo, when the town suddenly became clogged with college kids from a nearby city, and Main Street was ankle deep in beer cans on the morning of the fifth, and I would find people I didn’t know sleeping it off in my front yard, under the scraggly elm. The salmonfly hatch was like that, only with stockbrokers and flying hooks. Besides, there were other places and other ways to catch fish. I would take my rod and my waders and disappear to a small spring creek that ran through a stock ranch on the bottomland east of the river.

It was private property. There was no room for guided boats on this little creek, and there was no room for tweed. Instead of tweed there were sheep—usually about thirty head, bleating in halfhearted annoyance but shuffling out of my way as I hiked from the barn out to the water. There was an old swayback horse named Buck, a buckskin; also a younger one, a hot white-stockinged mare that had once been a queen of the barrel-racing circuit and hadn’t forgotten her previous station in life. There was a graveyard of rusty car bodies, a string of them, DeSotos and Fords from the Truman years, dumped into the spring creek along one bend to hold the bank in place and save the sheep pasture from turning into an island. Locally this sort of thing is referred to as the “Detroit riprap” mode of soil conservation; after a while, the derelict cars come to seem a harmonious part of the scenery. There was also an old two-story ranch house of stucco with yellow trim. Inside lived a man and a woman, married then.

Now we have come to the reason I did live in that town. Actually there wasn’t one reason but three: the spring creek, the man, and the woman. At the time, for a stretch of years, those were three of the closest friends I’d ever had.

The post Can You Step in the Same River Twice? In Montana, I Learned the Answer. appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

My friends have more money than me and always want to take trips that I can’t afford. But I hate missing out on being with them. What should I do?

This is a super frustrating problem, compounded by the fact that the language we use around money (or lack thereof) is often dizzyingly non-specific. When someone says, “I’m broke,” they could mean, “My bank account is in the negative and I don’t know how I’ll eat this month,” or they could mean, “My next trust fund payment doesn’t come in until Tuesday.”

Money is precise, of course, but in a group of friends, it’s also relative. We measure our finances against our peers, but we don’t actually know how much money they have, so instead we measure against what we think they have, though that estimate may be wildly different from the truth. Add that to issues of shifting employment, debt, and family responsibility, and it’s no wonder that talking about money can be awkward with even the closest friends.

This is all to say that your experience is, unfortunately, common, because it’s exceedingly rare for a group of people to be in the exact same financial boat, let alone consistently so. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone else in your friend group is in the same situation as you are, but hasn’t known how to speak up.

And speaking up is exactly what you should do, even if it feels uncomfortable. But first, figure out your budget, so that you can talk specifics. (When it comes to money, people tend to interpret ambiguous statements by projecting their own experience, which isn’t exactly going to help you here.) What amount can you spend on adventures with your friends? Are you able to afford the occasional bigger trip, as long as it’s not a regular occurrence? Or is your budget basically zero? What would be a comfortable amount for you to spend? If you come to them with numbers—“Hey guys, I really want to do this, but my fun budget this month is a hundred dollars”—then it’s going to be much easier for your friends to adjust their plans accordingly.

Remember, your friends want your company. It’s completely normal (and great) for groups of buddies to adjust to each other’s limitations. Maybe you plan your hangouts for Saturdays, because someone has to work on Sunday. Or you when you’re hiking, because someone’s allergic to peanuts. That’s not hardship; it’s friendship. Supporting each other, and making adjustments, is part of what community is all about.

How to Plan Budget-Friendly Trips

Your friends may be able to help support you on trips they’ve already planned, like by letting you sleep in their hotel room or packing food instead of stopping at restaurants along the way. They might still take the occasional trip you can’t afford, but overall, if they’re considerate, they’ll keep your budget in mind.

That said, if you really want group trips that stick to your budget, the best way to ensure they happen is by planning them yourself. This is true for anyone who has limitations that their friends don’t, whether those limitations are financial, physical, or something else. Your friends may not understand your criteria, even if they want to. But if you plan something and invite them, they’ll be delighted—and you’ll know that the trip works for you, too.

What are your friends into? What seems fun to you? The great thing about outdoor travel is that it can be dirt cheap (no pun intended) or even free, if you take advantage of public land, shared equipment, or stuff you already have. Keep an eye out for community events, or natural phenomena like migrations or meteor showers that make even a local jaunt feel exciting. Or try something new, like foraging, and do the research yourself ahead of time. Remember that adventures aren’t fun because they’re expensive; they’re fun because of good company, or because you’re stepping outside your daily life and exploring.

If someone reading this column is the friend with more money, let this be a reminder to be considerate, and to hold off on making assumptions about what your friends can afford. Remember that amounts of money that feel small to you can cause a lot of stress for your friends, which is the last thing you want to do! That’s not to say that you should stop inviting people on trips that may be out of their budget; it’s on them to say yes or no, and everyone likes to be invited, even if they don’t ultimately come along. But try to balance those with cheaper activities—or better yet, free ones. You want your friends to know that you don’t love their company because of what they can pay for, or what you get to do together. You love their company because of who they are.

Blair Braverman writes our Tough Love column. Her favorite cheap adventure is river tubing: park one car down-river, then carpool upstream and float your way back down. In her experience, old-school tire inner tubes are often less than $10 and less likely to pop than low- or mid-priced float tubes.

The post I’m Broke, But My Friends Keep Planning Expensive Group Vacations appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

Welcome to Tough Love. We’re answering your questions about dating, breakups, and everything in between. Our advice giver is Blair Braverman, dogsled racer and author of and . Have a question of your own? Write to us at toughlove@outsideinc.com.

I consider myself pretty easygoing when it comes to lending gear to my friends. I have a lot of niche gear, and I’m happy for other people to be using it when I’m not. It’s not doing any good when it’s sitting in my garage. However, I am encountering a bit of a problem with a close friend who borrowed my nice skis this winter, when I had an injury and couldn’t use them.Ìę

He used them all season, which I was glad for, but after the snow melted, I started trying to get them back. The first time I asked him, he said, “It doesn’t matter right now, because you’re not using them either, right?” When I brought it up again, he said, “Just let me know when you want to use them, and I’ll give them back to you then.” I brought it up a third time, and he said the same thing.Ìę

At this point I feel like I’m nagging him, which I hate doing. I have two questions for you. One: how do I get my darn skis back? And two: how do I keep from being in this situation in the future? I’m not a very assertive person and it makes me nervous to even think about confronting him.

As a fellow lender—and borrower—of gear, I applaud your generosity and feel your pain. I’m guessing your friend isn’t actually trying to steal your skis. It’s possible that he damaged them in some way and is afraid to tell you, so he’s punting the problem or saving money to replace them. But the most likely truth is the obvious one: he’s a procrastinator who genuinely thinks you don’t need the skis right now, and he doesn’t realize that by sidestepping your request, he’s effectively pushing you around.

You could solve the problem in about five minutes by being assertive, but I know that advice may not help; if confrontation isn’t in your character, then I might as well advise you to make new skis out of thin air. So let’s take a step back and consider your options, in order from most to least bold.

1. Say, “Can I have my skis back?” He’ll try to put off returning them. You’ll say, “No, I want them right now. Please go get them.”
2. Say, “Can I have my skis back?” When he tries to put it off, come up with an excuse for why you need them now. Possibilities include: another friend might want to look at them; you’re organizing your garage; you might travel somewhere with snow.
3. Actually plan a summer ski trip so that you’re telling the truth about needing your skis back now.
4. Take your friend at his word that he’ll return the skis when you need them. Look on the bright side—skis are bulky, and he’s storing them for you.
5. Abandon the skis. They’re his now.

Technically, any of these will work, although I think that number four is the most practical. You’ve brought up the skis enough times that he should have gotten the hint; clearly he hasn’t, but he hasn’t gone against his word, either.

It would be reasonable, in this situation, to be a little slower to lend him gear in the future, or (assuming the skis eventually make their way back to you, as promised) make sure that any future lending comes with a firm, agreed-upon return date. A good friend is more important than a piece of gear, but you’re not betraying your friendship by setting boundaries. You’re protecting it. You’re making sure that you don’t end up with years’ worth of unspoken stress and discomfort that comes to mind whenever you see him.

That said, the best thing you can do for your friendship—and more importantly, for yourself—is to work on standing up for yourself. Why is it that you feel so timid about confronting him more directly? Is it because you’re worried about feeling uncomfortable in the moment, or because you’re afraid he’ll like you less in the long term? Do you think his feelings should take precedence over yours? I want to remind you that very few people choose their friends based on who they can push around—and if they do, that’s not someone you want to be friends with anyway. You have a million things to contribute that don’t involve making yourself and your preferences smaller. You also have plenty to contribute that doesn’t involve lending out your gear. Yes, that’s great—but even if you had nothing to lend, your friends would like you anyway.

Building that kind of confidence is a long journey, and not something that can be fixed over a pair of borrowed skis, but maybe this situation can be a chance for you to practice the kind of forthrightness that challenges you. In fact, I suspect it already has been. You brought up the skis with your friend three times, which probably wasn’t easy for you. I know it’s frustrating that your request didn’t work, at least not immediately. But you successfully asserted yourself, and your friend offered a plan for when he’s returning the skis. Is it perfect? Not yet. But it’s a glide in the right direction.

The post My Friend Borrowed My Skis and Won’t Give Them Back. What Should I Do? appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

Welcome to Tough Love. We’re answering your questions about dating, breakups, and everything in between. Our advice giver is Blair Braverman, dogsled racer and author of and . Have a question of your own? Write to us at toughlove@outsideinc.com.

I grew up at my family’s kayak company, and have been helping to guide trips ever since I could hold a paddle. As I got older, I started bringing my friends along. Two of them got really involved with the company, and this summer, they’re both working as guides. Now it seems like they think they own the place, and it feels disrespectful. Do you have any advice for handling one’s own friends in a workplace?

Here’s the thing: your friends are insiders at your family’s company. They’re not as close as you, of course. No one will ever be. But they work there. They’re on the inside track.

That changes your relationship with them—and your sense of authority—and it’s gotta feel weird and unfamiliar.

For years, you’ve been the one in charge. You’ve welcomed your friends on adventures that they couldn’t access any other way. You’ve granted coveted invitations. You’ve shared your family’s gear, and more than that, you’ve shared your world. And what a world it is! The only thing cooler than having a friend with a family kayak company is being the friend with a family kayak company.

Trust me, I know. I grew up with a pal whose dad was a rafting guide (as it turned out, he had guided my parents on their honeymoon) and she invited a small group of us on a multi-day float trip each year. It was incredible. We left school early on Friday. Slept on the shore. Spent hours twirling in the current, cracking open cans of root beer, and leaning back to dip our hair in the water. I remember floating on my back in the brown river, watching my toes breach the surface, and thinking that there was absolutely, definitely, nothing better in the world than this.

My friend, the guide’s daughter, captained the kids’ boat. She knew how to navigate rapids, identify birds and turtles, and set up camp in the evenings. She did this kind of thing all the time.Ìę

She was our queen.

Until now, that monarch has been you.

But now your friends are guides, too, and that’s destabilizing. You were the cool one because you got them access to kayaks. Now they don’t need you for that, and it makes your role seem superfluous. Where does that leave you? What do you have to offer? I want to assure you that kayaks are cool, and you’re cool, but not just because you’re doling out kayaks. And the fact that your friends are moving up in the kayaking world doesn’t mean that you’re moving down.Ìę

You’re always going to be more of an insider than they are, because this is your family’s company. Even if your friends start their own kayak companies, you’ll have something they don’t, which is the experience of growing up with this. Seriously! You can be 50 years old and mention that you grew up at a kayak tour company, and people will be impressed and want to hear about it. I know I do.

Although by then, I hope you’ll feel confident enough in your own worth that you won’t feel the need to measure yourself against the people you care about. I don’t say this with judgment, truly. It sounds like you’re young, which means you’re still negotiating all that you are, and all that you have to offer. That’s a big journey. It’s destabilizing by necessity. Your identity, your authority, your passions—all of those things will evolve, and the feelings and insecurities you struggle with now will work themselves out with time.

Which is all to say that if your friends’ new roles make you uncomfortable, that’s not necessarily a bad discomfort, but an important one. If it helps, try to find another friend (someone you don’t work with) who will help you process all the worry and annoyance this brings up. Ideally, this should be someone who’s not prone to drama, and who can empathize with the ways you’re feeling challenged without assuming that someone must be at fault.

If the problems with your newly-employed friends shift from the emotional to the practical—if, for instance, they’re going places they’re not supposed to, using equipment that’s not permitted, and so on—then that’s a different kind of challenge, one that puts you in a tough spot. Your best bet for managing their behavior (while maintaining your bond) isn’t to issue demands, but to appeal to their friendship: “Hey guys, this is against the rules, so it puts me in a weird position. Can you not?” Good friends will stop. They’ll value your friendship more than their personal goal of a moonlit naked kayak trek or whatever. And if they don’t, then maybe their friendship wasn’t that real to begin with.

But it doesn’t sound like things have come to that, and I doubt that they will. The season is just starting. Pretty soon, you’ll be less startled when your friends bust through STAFF ONLY doors. And by then, I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re well on your way to embracing your best summer ever.

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Welcome to Tough Love. We’re answering your questions about dating, breakups, and everything in between. Our advice giver is Blair Braverman, dogsled racer and author of and . Have a question of your own? Write to us atÌętoughlove@outsideinc.com.

My friend and I recently went on a three-day backpacking trip together, which involved several sections of alpine terrain. She’s afraid of lightning to the point where she perseverates about it, even though the risk of being hit by lightning is extremely small. There’s a reason that “you’re more likely to be hit by lightning” is a common phrase. I promised that we would do everything we could to be below the treeline in the afternoons, when storms tend to come in. The weather ended up being overcast but not stormy for the first two days, which was too bad because we couldn’t really take in the views.

On our last morning, we slept in, and when we woke up the weather was nicer than it had been the whole time. It seemed like a waste to have come all that way and then hurry back when everything was perfect, so she agreed to add on an extra short hike up to a view point before we started back to the trailhead. It was only two miles so it shouldn’t have added more than an hour or so to our hiking for the day.Ìę

She kept pulling out her phone while we were hiking to check the time, which irritated me, because one of my pet peeves is people looking at their phones when we’re trying to be present together. Because I was irritated, I was distracted, and we ended up missing a turn and going on a longer route. This led to us being caught in a brief thunderstorm and she freaked out. It passed in about 15 minutes and we were fine. I tried to explain to her that by obsessing over bad weather, she had actually caused us to be caught in bad weather, and if she could try to let her fears go, we would have a much better time. This was a mistake on my part, because she wasn’t in the mood for feedback. She’s mad at me for getting lost, and I’m annoyed because I think she owes me an apology, too. How do we get past this?

What do you think your friend should apologize for? I’m serious; take a moment and think about what you’re expecting, and what would feel fair. Should she apologize for saying that being high on a mountain in stormy weather would make her panic, and then panicking when that exact thing happened? Should she apologize for agreeing to an extra hike on the condition that it was short, then being worried when it stretched longer? Should she apologize for the fact that you blamed her for the missed turn, when it sounds like you were the one who made an error? Sure, she was checking her phone, and that can be totally annoying. If you plan more backpacking trips together, you can have a conversation about how phone-checking in nature stresses you out, and maybe ask if she could check a watch instead. But it would be just as reasonable for her to ask you to try to get over your phone hangup, because traveling together is about compromise, and in the scheme of things, glancing at a phone is not that big of a deal. If that were your biggest challenge when hiking together, I’d say you were a very compatible pair.

I don’t think your friend should be mad at you for missing the turn. Part of the unspoken agreement of having outdoor adventures with pals is that you’re going to try your best, but mistakes happen, and you’ll deal with whatever situations arise together. But I think that by framing her anger as being about the missed turn, you’re creating a red herring; you’re using that to downplay the very real other things that I suspect she’s more annoyed about, like the fact that—by the sound of it—you pressured her to go on an alpine hike later in the day than she was comfortable with, and then held her responsible for a turn that you yourself missed. I’ll add that, while it does sound like your friend struggles with a fear of lightning, her logic isn’t actually wrong. Getting struck by lightning may be extremely rare, but when you’re in a high place without shelter during an electrical storm, you’re putting yourself in the proximate occasion of a big zap.

As for the fact that your friend wasn’t in the mood for feedback, I’m not surprised. You were hardly offering her a caring, compassionate insight that might make her life better. You were basically saying, “Here’s what I don’t like about you. Here’s what you should change about yourself for me.”

So, speaking of feedback, here’s my advice for you: instead of waiting for your friend to apologize, try apologizing first. After all, you’re having a conflict with someone you care about, and apologizing first is a surefire way to de-escalate; it shows that you’re more invested in repairing the friendship than in protecting your own ego. If you come forward and say something like, “Hey, I’m really sorry that I took my irritation out on you, and blamed you for getting caught in the storm. That wasn’t fair, and it wasn’t true. The truth is, I was just frustrated, because I care about you having a good time, and the whole reason I wanted to add the hike on the last day was so that our trip could end on a good note. It’s important to me for you to feel like I have your back,” you’re making an opening for her to respond with honesty and compassion, too. (Of course, don’t offer an apology that’s not true; she’ll see through it, and feel demeaned. But if you sit with your feelings, and try to figure out what went wrong, I wouldn’t be surprised if you came up with something along those lines.)

At that point, the ball is in your friend’s court, and I hope she’ll respond with similar grace. Depending on how the conversation goes, you might decide that it’s better to take a break from backpacking together, at least for a little while. But now that you’re off the mountain, and far from the threat of lightning, you’ll probably both start feeling better quickly. That’s part of the nature of backcountry trips: you go, you learn, you change. I know you would both do things differently in the future—and I hope that you get that chance.

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Welcome to Tough Love. We’re answering your questions about dating, breakups, and everything in between. Our advice giver is Blair Braverman, dogsled racer and author of and . Have a question of your own? Write to us atÌętoughlove@outsideinc.com.

My friend has told me that she wants to be more outdoorsy, so she’s asked me to take her on a backpacking trip, since I’m an avid backpacker. We’re currently planning a four-day trip for late September. However, I’m feeling anxious about it for a reason that’s kind of personal.

My friend is incredibly athletic: she’s literally a marathon runner. The thing is, I’m not traditionally athletic at all. I hated gym class, was bad at it, and always found it embarrassing. I’m also plus size and didn’t find any exercise that felt good to me until I started hiking and backpacking in my twenties. I discovered that I really enjoyed moving my body when no one else was watching or judging me, and I feel strong and at peace in the woods. For that reason, most of my backpacking trips are solo. The longest I’ve completed was a three-week solo trip two summers ago.Ìę

My friend doesn’t have any backpacking experience, so I’ll be showing her how to set up camp, cook, filter water, and that kind of thing. But despite the fact that I have a lot of confidence in my backpacking skills, I’ve been feeling like an impostor as we plan the trip. After all, we’re doing something athletic, and she’s much more of a natural than I am.Ìę I’m worried that I’ll be the one holding her back, and that I’ll feel self-conscious in a way that I usually go into the woods to get away from, which is something that she probably can’t imagine. How can I have the confidence to lead her on a backpacking trip when, in my mind, she’s already better at it than me?

Backpacking is a fundamentally physical activity, in the sense that it’s about using your body in the world—but it’s also fundamentally about self-sufficiency, connecting with nature, learning to sleep in the wilderness, adjusting to weather, and being creative with limited supplies. You know what doesn’t define backpacking? How far you go, and how fast. You could travel a quarter-mile each day at a naturalist’s pace (read: stopping constantly, moving from one interesting plant or animal to the next, sketching in your notebook, spying on bugs), and as long as you set up camp and slept outside, you’d totally be backpacking. Your friend could run an ultramarathon on a mountain, and though it might be an awesome adventure, it wouldn’t be backpacking at all. That’s why she approached you—for your expertise. And it sounds like you have a lot of it.

A three-week solo backpacking trip is a wildly impressive accomplishment. Seriously. Can we take a moment to appreciate that?! You spent almost a month alone, carrying your world on your back, facing solitude, animals, bugs, rain, blisters, cold, and heat—and with a trip that long, I imagine you had to do some serious on-the-fly problem-solving, too, with no instincts to lean on but your own. You completed something that only a tiny percentage of people will ever dream of trying. And while I don’t want to rank achievements against each other, I think it’s fair to say that if your friend has any sense at all, she’s as wowed by your backpacking experience as you are by her marathon running—just as both of you should be.

I know that gym-class scars and body shame run deep. Much like you, it took me a while to figure out that I liked moving my body, mainly because my California phys-ed classes were outdoors, in 100-degree temperatures, and students weren’t allowed to shower afterward. I’d spend the entire hour trying to move—and sweat—as little as possible. (It also didn’t help that I was also afraid of balls and dismally bad at running the mile. Rather than humiliate myself by coming in last, I preferred to refuse to try). When I figured out that it was heat, not exercise, that I hated, it felt like a revelation. So I can imagine, a little, how you might have felt when you discovered hiking and backpacking. Being deep in nature, away from expectations and judgment, moving through the world on your own power. I’m so happy for you that you found a place where you feel free.

I in no way want to dismiss the difficulties that come from existing in a larger body in our society, particularly for women. That’s something that you know acutely, and that your friend may never understand. But I do want to push back on your assumption that she’s never felt the kind of self-consciousness that the woods can help to heal. Thin women can hate their bodies, sometimes viciously; the suggestion that things are always otherwise seems like an idealization of thinness that’s rooted more in propaganda than fact. It’s highly possible that the work you’ve done to find peace and joy in your own body is something that she hasn’t managed yet. Our greatest skills aren’t necessarily the ones that come naturally, but the ones we’ve fought for, and earned.

Speaking of skills, as you noted, you’ll have a ton to teach her: everything from how to pack a backpack to how to make camp and get through a pitch-black night without freaking out about bears and Bigfoot. There is absolutely zero question that you are the expert here—and she knows that, which is why she approached you! The only place I’d anticipate a discrepancy is that, when you’re actually walking along the trail, her natural pace might be faster. If that brings up fear or shame for you, you might want to talk to her about it beforehand. For all you know, she’s been anxious about a different element of the trip, and by modeling openness and vulnerability, you’ll make space for her to do the same. Since different paces tend to separate on uphills in particular, you could also seek out a trail that’s mostly flat, so that any speed differences are less likely to come into play.

Worst-case scenario, you’ll have an awkward four days, and can promptly go back to your solo travels. Best-case scenario, you’ll have a new backpacking buddy—someone who appreciates your expertise, loves being outside, and can plan adventures with you. Either way, I know you’ll be giving your friend a powerful and possibly life-changing experience, and I hope you’ll have one too. I’ll be rooting for you both.

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Welcome to Tough Love. We’re answering your questions about dating, breakups, and everything in between. Our advice giver is Blair Braverman, dogsled racer and author of and . Have a question of your own? Write to us atÌętoughlove@outsideinc.com.

I live in a very outdoorsy town surrounded by beautiful nature, and I love to get out hiking whenever I can. Unfortunately, I don’t have a car, which means that I either need to rent or borrow one, or go with a friend. I’d love to go hiking with people more regularly but I’m fairly new to town and I think the friends I have here already have other hiking buddies, so I don’t really get invited out much.Ìę

The problem is that I’m really self-conscious about asking anyone for a ride or to go hiking—it’s hard enough for me to ask for things, but I have chronic knee pain so I’m pretty slow hiking downhill. I can definitely hold my own going up, but even using hiking poles (which help a lot!) I still feel like I just slow people down. I know that I can tell people to go on ahead and I’ll meet them at the bottom—which I prefer, to be honest—but then that’s putting them in an uncomfortable position of waiting and/or feeling like they’re leaving me behind.Ìę

There have been times in the past when I’ve definitely felt like a burden on the group. And what’s even worse is that I don’t even have a good reason for my knee pain—there’s no obvious injury that people would understand, and I struggle to do the basic physical therapy exercises. (PT is so hard to follow through on!) So it just feels like an ongoing issue that I’m not even putting in my best effort to fix.Ìę

I don’t want to make it feel like I’m just using people for a ride to the woods, and I also don’t want to burden them with my slow hiking. What do I have to offer in return? I just feel needy and slow. Thanks for your advice about how I can get out hiking more with people.

Yours truly,
Downhill Bummer

If there’s one thing writing this column has taught me, it’s that there are a ton of people struggling to find good outdoor buddies—and that many of them feel self-conscious about their pace. People worry about being too fast or too slow, too inexperienced, or too prone to stopping and smelling the flowers. And a lot of them are embarrassed about taking time on the uphills, which makes your worry about downhills seem almost refreshing. If you can be patient while a companion hikes up, and they can be patient while you hike down, you’ll be solving two peoples’ insecurities at once.

It is absolutely acceptable—and normal—to call a friend (who lives relatively nearby), invite them on a hiking trip, and explain that you don’t have a car so you’d need them to pick you up on the way. Most of us know what it’s like to be car-less, and are only too happy to help out. If someone did this to me, I wouldn’t bat an eye; if anything, I’d feel like the drive was a chance to spend a little more time together, and maybe we could grab ice cream or coffee on the way. And even if I couldn’t go, I’d be honored to be considered as a hiking buddy.

The thing is, taking the initiative to find a hike and suggest it to someone is a gift, and asking for a ride doesn’t negate that. It’s especially nice if you’re specific with your invitation: “Hey, I read about a five-mile loop trail around Saddle Mountain that passes some really pretty waterfalls. Would you want to go there together this Saturday or Sunday? The weather’s supposed to be clear all weekend.” It’s easy for all of us to settle into routines, and lovely when someone does the research and suggests something new. If you want to give back even more, in appreciation for the ride, you can bring fun snacks along, learn some interesting facts about the area that you can share on the way, or snap pictures of your friend in action and text them after the hike. These are all fun ways to contribute to an excursion—even though, by being present and friendly and kind, you’re already giving the most important contribution of all.

As for feeling awkward about your knee, your best bet is to go for full disclosure up front. “Just so you know, I have a knee problem and am slow on the downhills. It’s totally fine with me if you hike ahead and wait. I just wanted to let you know beforehand because I feel self-conscious about it.” Sometimes acknowledging your self-consciousness aloud is all it takes to diminish it. (Plus, it’s a good practice for building trust in friendships.) Also, this gives your companion a chance to back out if they hate waiting and their main priority on hikes is, like, going downhill really fast. But I’m guessing most folks won’t care in the slightest. Truly. They might even feel relieved, and confide an insecurity of their own.

You can also side-step the issue completely by finding hikes without downhills. This is a long shot, but if you happen to live near a gondola, you can often hike to the top and catch a ride back down for free. Another option would be to choose a one-way hike with road access on both ends, hike the uphill route, and then hitchhike back to the first trailhead. And the simplest solution, of course, is to opt for flatter trails, which might be a good choice for your knee anyway.

Whatever you choose, I suspect that you won’t be stuck in this situation for long. Once you get a routine going with a compatible pal or two, there will be no need for negotiations. They’ll know that they’re the driver, and they’ll have a nice stretching routine figured out for when they’re waiting at the bottom of a hill. You’ll know that they’re a total sucker for Fig Newtons, so you’ll keep a bag in your pack to bust out at scenic overlooks, and you’ll also know that they’re obsessed with mushrooms and can’t pass one without pulling out a field guide (which is a great opportunity for you to squeeze in some PT exercises). This is, after all, how some of the best friendships are made: not by not having quirks, but by learning to look out for each others’ as we do for our own. You’re not a burden. You’re lifting each other up.

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Welcome to Tough Love. We’re answering your questions about dating, breakups, and everything in between. Our advice giver is Blair Braverman, dogsled racer and author of and . Have a question of your own? Write to us atÌętoughlove@outsideinc.com.

I think my friend is trying to get stuck in the wilderness. This year we have started taking weekend backpacking trips together and have a nice time. Last time, we were hiking to the trailhead on Sunday and there were dark clouds gathering in the sky, but according to the weather report it wasn’t supposed to storm until afternoon. I thought we could make it easily but it seemed like he kept stalling along the way, and finally he said that we wouldn’t make it out in time and we should set up camp and wait out the weather. He seemed weirdly cheerful about it. I said that was unnecessary and sure enough we got to the car with plenty of time. It made me realize that he often suggests that kind of thing, like that we can’t keep going (on the way back), or that we’ll have to wait out the weather. One time he said the trail was impassible, but we eventually got through. I’ll admit I felt a little thrilled at the thought of staying out, too, but I quickly thought better of it. My friend loves survival shows and often says that he would do well onÌęAlone.ÌęAm I off base for thinking that maybe he’s trying to make that happen in real life? To be clear, I don’t feel scared, but I do feel like on some level he is wanting us to get stuck out there. Is this dangerous? What is the best way to handle it?

I’ll confess that I find your friend’s efforts a bit charming, even though—let me be very clear here—it is highly irresponsible to try to get trapped in the woods. Lost hikers don’t just put themselves in danger, but put rescuers at risk, too, and they can stretch already-thin search-and-rescue resources to the brink. If you’re in a more trafficked area, with designated campsites, then changing routes and camping in unplanned spots can seriously affect the natural environment. Stories about lost hikers are also apt to scare would-be outdoorspeople out of getting involved in their local nature scene, making the woods seem more ominous and unpredictable than they really are. These are all bad things! Also, it’s not cool and you just shouldn’t do it. There are better ways.

If you ever for a second get the vibe that your friend is sabotaging your trips—intentionally losing the trail or misplacing the map, forgetting or damaging vital supplies, things like that—then you should hightail it away from this guy and never go backpacking with him again. It doesn’t seem like that’s what’s happening now, but his actionsÌęcouldÌędevelop into something more insidious, so it’s worth keeping an eye out and staying aware.

However, it doesn’t really sound, from your examples, like your buddy is doing dangerous things. It sounds like he’s just hoping in his heart that he might have to sleep out an extra night, or wait out a rainstorm in a tent, in the same way that someone might fantasize about getting stuck at a dream vacation destination so that they don’t have to leave.

The thing is, the more advanced that someone’s backcountry travel is, the less of a line there is between getting stuck and not getting stuck—because the longer someone’s out there, the more they’ll have to adapt their plans to changing conditions rather than sticking to an ironclad schedule that was planned in advance. For a weeklong trip, it wouldn’t be unusual to plan an extra day of buffer time, or even a few days, since you know you’ll have unexpected challenges, detours, and rests. And for a longer trip, like a thru-hike or expedition, most schedules and dates can’t be pre-planned at all. You’ll get there when you get there, and you’ll cross what you have to cross. Even if it were possible to plan a precise schedule, it would be beside the point; the point is living along the way.

I wonder if your friend’s reluctance to reach the trailhead—and your own thrill at the thought of staying out—is a sign that you’re craving, and emotionally ready for, longer trips, with all the fluidity that they entail. Is he up for four days? Five? Are you? If doubling or tripling your distances seems daunting, you could start by giving yourselves more days for the same length trip: set up a base camp, explore, and take day hikes en route, without the pressure of constantly moving (and hauling additional food and supplies a longer distance).

Another option—if your friend wants the excitement of feeling “stuck” out there—is to hire a boat to leave you on an island, with supplies, then have it come back again and pick you up a set time later. (Or go backpacking somewhere like Isle Royale national park, which is located on a remote island itself.) That’s definitely an advanced alternative, but with the right preparation, it can be a fun and responsible adventure. Heck, you could even offer to split up for a while to let your friend try out being “Alone.”

My hunch is that you don’t need to overthink your friend’s survival bent; it means you’re both ready for more adventures, and hey, you’re adults and you get to make that happen! You have a world of trips ahead of you, and a beloved companion who’s game. Travel farther. Be flexible. Plan unplanned time. You don’t need a storm to make you stay longer in the wilderness. You can stay because you want to, or because the sun is hitting a lake just right. You can stay because it feels like home.

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Welcome to Tough Love. We’re answering your questions about dating, breakups, and everything in between. Our advice giver is Blair Braverman, dogsled racer and author of and . Have a question of your own? Write to us atÌętoughlove@outsideinc.com.

I recently went on my first outdoor group trip, run by an excellent European outfitter. I had a great time, although I went by myself and most of the rest of the party was comprised of couples who I did not know. There was one other single woman along, however, and she rubbed folks the wrong way; her intentions were good—she attempted to chat up both the faster and the slower hikers in their respective positions on the trail, for example—but she had a tendency to critique other hikers’ ability, ate lunch apart from the group, and showed up late to breakfast in the mornings, which put things slightly behind and irked the guides. By the end of our two weeks together, she was getting the cold shoulder from nearly everyone, or pointed remarks that I could tell hurt her feelings (she mentioned as much to me a few times). One afternoon, everyone in our group save this woman were enjoying a beer outside of our hotel, and the gathering turned into a total bash on her. I realize she was no peach, but this turned me off to the whole idea of group travel in the outdoors—this kind of dynamic of ganging up on someone. I’m afraid it may always be so and am now reluctant to look into any kind of similar outfitter adventure. Have you had these kinds of experiences in group travel? Is this sort of experience inevitable?

Or perhaps you’ve had the opposite experience. I’d like to believe that humans who don’t know each other can actually get along for an expedition in the mountains for two weeks—cordially at the very least. But my impression is that when you sign up for such a trip, it’s bound to be a mixed bag of folks and you have to head into it hoping for the best.

First off, it’s so cool that you went and did this by yourself! That’s really awesome. Welcome home, and I hope your adjustment back has been great.

I think you’re absolutely right that a group of strangers is always going to be a mixed bag. That’s just the nature of groups; we’re not all alike, and some people are bound to chafe against each other. If you head into a group environment hoping for the best—that is, hoping that you’ll somehow land in an extraordinary group of people who all mesh perfectly with each other, including with you—you’re almost certain to be disappointed. ItÌęcanÌęhappen, but it’s something of a miracle; even groups of best friends can end up developing tensions when they travel together.

So it’s a better bet to go into group travel knowing that, sure, there may be tensions, but that’s part of the beauty of it all: working through something interesting and challenging with a group of others, and coming through the experience together with a different kind of bond. This isn’t just true for group travel, of course; it’s what happens any time a group of people are thrust together, whether for school or work or anything else. Part of the project itself is learning to get along.

I think that when you encounter groups like this in the future, you can try to go into things with certain expectations and commitments, especially if you know that you’re sensitive to other people’s negative energy. It’s interesting—and I admire you for this—that the thing that turned you off on this last trip wasn’t the fact that this woman was rude and annoying, but thatÌęeveryone elseÌęjoined in to say unkind things about her. So it was less about the fact that someone didn’t fit in, and more about the responsibility that a group has toward people who are on the outs (even by their own choice).

That’s good news, because while you can’t control whether someone will be annoying, you do have influence over how the group as a whole responds. Anyone has the power to really deflate group ganging-up energy simply by speaking up, especially if you’ve generally been getting along well with the others. If you notice the conversation steering toward negative things around one particular person, even a simple statement like, “Look, it makes me uncomfortable to be here saying bad things about her behind her back. I know she’s rubbed some of us the wrong way, but maybe we could try to stay positive and change the subject.” It takes a really determined gossip to keep talking badly about someone after they’ve just been called out about it, and while people are sure to keep venting in their private or smaller-group conversations (and in fact, they should be able to vent, particularly if this woman made comments about others’ abilities—that’s super rude!), at least it’ll protect the dynamic of the group as a whole.

Another option is to get group leaders involved earlier on. For instance, when this woman first started critiquing other members of the group, the people she critiqued could have gone to the leaders and had them bring it up to her privately, or else anonymously to the whole group. (“Hey everyone, new group rule! There’s no commenting allowed about other people’s hiking skills.”)

Finally, if none of the above work, you can simply stick with a likeminded friend or two and remove yourself a bit from the group dynamics. You can’t control other people’s behavior, but you can take a couple steps back and find ways to enjoy the vacation on your own. Let that drama slide off your back. It’s not your problem.

Some groups are always going to mesh better than others, and maybe you ended up in a particularly negative one this time. But I’d encourage you to give group travel at least a few more tries before throwing in the towel. Sure, there are challenges—but the rewards can be pretty fantastic. You can make lifelong friends in a short period of time, and see things you’d never see otherwise—even if the complexities of human behavior are, well, just another part of the adventure.

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