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Serving Northern St. Louis County, Minnesota

Keeping the flame alive

Voyageur Outward Bound School marks 50 years

Aloysia Power
Posted 8/29/14

REGIONAL —This summer marks the 50th year the Voyageur Outward Bound School (VOBS) near Ely has used outdoor travel and activities to build character, leadership, and an appreciation of the natural …

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Keeping the flame alive

Voyageur Outward Bound School marks 50 years

Posted

REGIONAL —This summer marks the 50th year the Voyageur Outward Bound School (VOBS) near Ely has used outdoor travel and activities to build character, leadership, and an appreciation of the natural world in its students and staff.

In celebration of VOBS’s landmark anniversary, more than 200 of its former staff and alumni will gather at the school’s wilderness base, called the “Homeplace,” from Aug. 29 to Sept. 1 for some paddling and other outdoor activities, as well as a pig roast.

Many of the former staff and students won’t have to commute far to take part in the celebration. Over the years, VOBS has not only had an impact on its students and staff— it’s had a noticeable effect on Ely itself, which has become the permanent home of many former VOBS staff. And those former staff mem-bers have exhibited the values of VOBS in their daily lives, as they provide leadership and energy to a number of organizations in town.

“There’s a pretty strong community within the staff,” said Suellen Sack, program director at VOBS. “The outcomes of all our courses revolve around service and cooperation. And that willingness to be involved in community follows through.”

Since its beginnings in 1964, when Bob Pieh established the school outside of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW), VOBS has grown to serve both men and women, at-risk youth, veterans and adventurers. The school leads small groups of these people on canoeing, climbing, backpacking, dog-sledding, skiing, and whitewater and sea kayaking trips around northern Minnesota and Wisconsin.

VOBS mission for these wilderness trips is to teach its students and staff members to serve others, pursue their best selves, be accountable for their actions and build inclusive communities.

And, according to Sack, the VOBS folk who stick around Ely are proof that the school’s efforts are working.

“I believe one of the greatest gifts is the work we do in developing staff,” said Sack. “They learn those skills and become facilitators. Any group they work with in the future benefits from that training.”

Local VOBS residents past and present range from healthcare workers, U.S. Forest Service employees, and business people to artists, carpenters and teachers – and the vast majority are involved in community organizations including the Ely Area Food Shelf, Girl Scouts, the Ely Nordic Ski Club and the Ely Winter Festival.

Former VOBS staff member Christine Mosher is just one example.

Mosher worked periodically at VOBS as a winter and summer instructor and course director from the late ‘80s until 2003. She left VOBS to continue working with people as a registered nurse in Virginia and has recently become a nurse practitioner. Along with working, she has spent a lot of her time volunteering within the Ely community, including programs like the Project Care free clinic and local schools.

“(VOBS) provided a framework for me working with people, like establishing a relationship and empowering people to make decisions and lifestyle choices and to take control of their health – mental as well as physical,” she said.

Like Mosher, former VOBS student and staff member Jeff Wilt also went into healthcare, but as a family physician at the Essentia Health Ely Clinic.

Wilt started at VOBS on a 25-day canoeing course when he was 18 and went on to work at the school as an instructor from 1984 to 1996.

“It’s sort of where I came of age,” said Wilt. “My own sense of values grew stronger when I was there. I came to understand what’s important to me – strong appreciation for the wilderness is one. I grew a strong desire to be helpful to society.”

While at VOBS, Wilt decided that becoming a doctor would be the best way to fulfill this desire to serve his community.

“Outward Bound sparked my interest in medicine as far as first aid training,” he said. “I knew I wanted to keep working with people in stressful situations and keep teaching one-on-one.”

The personal skills he developed while instructing at VOBS, he said, transfer well into caring for his patients at the Ely clinic.

“Someone would get stuck rock climbing – they couldn’t go up or down – and I’d have to help them get through it and make them feel like they did ion their own,” he said, pulling from a time he was a VOBS instructor. “I learned I had to be nonjudgmental and calm and let them know that I get where they are and letting them know that they’re not alone.”

Like Wilt and many other VOBS former staff, Bert Hyde is consistent with the service-career theme. He works as a local wildland firefighter, Morse-Fall Lake first responder, critical incident stress management team member and volunteer at the Project Care free clinic in Ely.

Hyde first came to Ely and the BWCAW as a Boy Scout and immediately fell in love with the surrounding wilderness.

So, when he returned to the town in the mid-70s, he figured he better work outside and joined on with VOBS as an instructor, and later, a course director.

“It kept me in the woods,” he said. “And it sure taught me to have a fun life without a lot of money.”

Hyde left the school in 1989 to get married to VOBS co-worker, now Johnnie Hyde, and together, they started a family in a homestead outside of Ely. They live a simple lifestyle, eating vegetables from their garden, cutting ice from the lake to use as refrigeration in the winter, and chopping wood to heat their house.

Throughout the year, the couple hosts groups of Vermilion Community College students at their home to teach them basic lifestyle skills. In return for their teaching, the Hydes get help with their wood chopping and ice cutting.

“We can show people that there are other options,” said Johnnie. “You don’t have to do a 60-hour-a-week job and have the typical house that everybody else has in order to have a good life and have what you need … if you provide for yourself a little bit more.”

Johnnie came to Ely in 1971 after graduating from Carleton College in Northfield, and worked periodically at VOBS from 1986 until about 2008. Now, she runs her publishing company, Raven Productions, works for the Ely ambulance and is busy being a grandma, mom and wife.

Johnnie said her teaching experiences at VOBS really taught her to live by her values and “walk your talk.”

“For me, I learn something by teaching it – even on a values-oriented basis,” she said. “I can’t say family is the most important thing to me and then not spend time with them. Family is very important to me, and so it’s important then that I invest my life in them and spend time with my kids and husband.”

Like Johnnie, teaching has been a valuable part of former VOBS Executive Director Julie Hignell’s life.

Since her time at VOBS from 1981 to 1994, she has been a local high school biology teacher and track coach and is now the Executive Director of Ely Community Resources. The program organizes after-school and summer youth programs that focus on character development.

“We use some of the same approaches (as VOBS) for developing character and teaching youth to take responsibility and to be a good team member,” said Hignell. “You learn about supporting each other and safety and helping each other accomplish goals.”

Alumni and former staff aren’t the only VOBS folk to get involved in the Ely community. Carol Orban, a former VOBS office manager, said the school’s students perform community service while at the school, including helping with the renovation of the Ely Area Food Shelf building.

Orban said VOBS is always looking for more service project opportunities within and around Ely.

VOBS, Aloysia Power, Outward Bound