This episode features Jenna Hampton, a student in Campfire’s Intro to Storytelling class. You can learn more about Jenna Hampton on the Campfire website, https://cmpfr.com/events/summer-2019-intro-to-storytelling/.
These episodes of The Campfire Storytelling Podcast showcase students who went through our Intro to Storytelling class. These students take a six-week class to prepare to tell a story about life and how they live it. Season 27 students told stories about “labels.”
This episode was originally performed in August 2019, produced by Jeff Allen, and recorded live at The Stage at KDHX.
This episode features Jenna Hampton, a student in Campfire’s Intro to Storytelling class. You can learn more about Jenna Hampton on the Campfire website, https://cmpfr.com/events/summer-2019-intro-to-storytelling/.
These episodes of The Campfire Storytelling Podcast showcase students who went through our Intro to Storytelling class. These students take a six-week class to prepare to tell a story about life and how they live it. Season 27 students told stories about “labels.”
This episode was originally performed in August 2019, produced by Jeff Allen, and recorded live at The Stage at KDHX.
[ Intro music]
Speaker 3:Hello again, Internet. I'm Steven Harowitz, and I will be your host for this episode of Campfire at Home recorded here in St. Louis, Missouri. Almost every month we gather at the Campfire to hear stories about life and how we live it from the everyday voices that live around us. Campfire at Home is how we bring that live storytelling experience to you wherever you are. In this episode, I have something special for you because we have stories to share from the Capstone event of our Season 9 Intro to Storytelling class. These stories come from students who signed up for a class through Campfire to learn about public speaking and storytelling, and in that first class, the students come in nervous, excited and looking around, not quite knowing who each other are yet, but then they slowly get to know one another as they collectively reflect on their lives through story. They started to see the output of their training and the power and liberation of owning and sharing their narrative, and even when it got scary or their nerves crept up, they kept choosing to take on the challenge and then there they were on stage in the lights delivering some truly delightful and some truly heavy stories and their natural voices. This series of podcasts includes the five Intro to Storytelling students, Amy, Paige, Jenna, Lizzie, and Melinda telling a story on the topic of labels, and when the event ended, beyond the hugs and smiles each storyteller got from those that had come to support them, Molly, who was their instructor this season, and myself got to say a heartfelt congratulations to five people with newfound skills in storytelling, confidence in their voice when speaking publicly, and an understanding of the power of story. Let's head to the Campfire to listen to Jenna's story on labels.
Speaker 4:One day last summer, I woke up at 5:00 AM. I was snug down, deep down to one of my sleeping bags, and I heard my watch alarm beeping in my year. It was time to wake up. It was the 14th day of a three week backpacking and camping trip in the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range in California. I ended up out there because when I graduated with my bachelor's degree, my dad said he would help me go on a trip to celebrate. I thought I might end up on the beach, on a cruise, somewhere I could relax and de-stress after the past four years, but because I'd been dabbling in backpacking and camping, my dad decided to send me on an Outward Bound trip. Outward Bound is an organization that takes young adults into the wild to learn about themselves and overcome challenges. So I woke up in a grassy field surrounded by 12 people who are strangers to me only two weeks ago. I pulled myself out of the warm sleeping bag, threw on my day pack, which was much lighter than the 40 to 50 pound pack I'd been carrying the rest of the trip, and we started to head out. The first part of the hike was easy. It was the kind of hiking that makes me feel calm and free and why I love being outdoors. I felt my hiking boots treading lightly on the ground. I hopped over a bubbling creek, and I tried to take in all the wildflowers around me. My favorites were the lupines, little purple ones that stuck up like mountain swords, but a couple hundred feet into the hike, the slope started getting steeper and my breaths started getting shorter. My asthmatic lungs were complaining, my friend Anisha and I stopped, and we pulled out our handy red inhalers. We shook them like Polaroid pictures and took two deep breaths. Anisha had been the first person to show me how to correctly use my inhaler a couple days ago, because it was the first time I admitted that I did need to use it and I did need help. So after taking the inhaler, I could breathe a little easier and we started back on the trail. At this point, a couple of my other friends were in front of me. Molly, who had short brown hair and was the only other girl in the group that had graduated already. And Shiazo, a girl with long flowing braids and a bandana to keep the sweat and mosquitoes out of her face. When I was walking behind them, I was subjected to a 30 minute conversation about which version of the Parent Trap is better, the Lindsay Lohan version or the older one. And even though I talked to them for hours at this point on the trip, I didn't join in the conversation. That's time. First, because I didn't really have an opinion on the matter. And second, I found it really hard to engage in such a dumb conversation when when my fear had started to rise about what we would face before we could reach the summit of the mountain. My group had come up, come up on some scree. Does anyone out there know what scree is? Good cause I'm gonna tell you. Scree is rocky, gritty sand that crunched in my mouth every time the wind blew it in. I had to dig my heels deep down into it and side step up the mountain just to avoid falling and sliding back on my butt, which was not fun. But the scree wasn't my problem. The scree wasn't making my fear rise. The issue is that scree is a warning sign for talus. Talus are giant rocks verging on boulders that make up the top of mountains in the Sierra Nevadas. They lay over each other in patterns that leave holds big enough for your ankle to fall through and break, which I worried about a lot. I hated the talus for a lot of reasons. We had to wear these big itchy helmets because if you fall on the talus, it's very likely you'll get concussed. Every time we'd been on the talus, about four or five times on the trip at this point, my heart would pound through my chest and panic. I found it hard to breathe, and my arms and legs would shake in a way that made it hard for me to hoist myself over them with any kind of grace. And about six months earlier in another mountain in Colorado, my mom had skied into a tree and broke her leg while I was there with her. So I knew very vividly and personally that with one wrong, wrong move in the mountains, you could get really hurt. But my group made it over the scree, and we found a flat spot on the ridge to eat lunch. We ate the same thing we'd been eating for lunch for the past 14 days. It was salami, cheese crackers, a peanut butter tortilla, and a fig bar, which I still remember, and it was oddly satisfying at this point. I took a huge gulp of water and slathered on some more sunscreen because, at about 11,000 feet now, the sun was scorching and I knew I was going to get a gnarly sunburn. My group decided to take a picture before we kept going, so we stood up, gave a thumbs up to the camera, and plastered on some smiles, which somehow I managed until we turned toward the talus field and my smile dropped. I took one last deep breath and started to put one foot in front of the other. I knew what to expect this time, so I told myself just to focus on the rock right in front of me, use the calluses that I had already built up to somehow get myself over each one, and when I felt like I couldn't do it on my own, I would reach out my hand and they would always be a hand out stretched to help me because my group knew that I needed help and I had learned to be willing to ask for it. It felt different this time on the talus, my group was moving a little slower, maybe out of recognition that we were much higher on it than we had been before. It was easier to move with the lighter pack, and I remember being calm enough at one point to have a conversation with my friend Molly. We talked about how hard it had been the past four years to balance social life, academics, work, health and everything else that we had to do in the past four years before graduating. And I realized that I had done harder things than hike over two hours of giant rocks before, and I felt confident that I could do it. But that's not to say that it was easy. It took every ounce of emotional and physical energy that I had left that afternoon to get across the talus. But I did it and I stayed positive. And when the rock started flattening out and it felt like the summit, I grabbed onto a talus rock next to me and finally took in the view from 12,000 feet. It was incredible. It felt like I was looking out an airplane window. There were tiny trees thousands of feet below me sticking up like the, um, toothpick trees on a train set. There were mountain tops below us at this point and some beside us standing there like friendly neighbors. There were alpine lakes and rivers and streams for miles with no sign of civilization, which felt really peaceful. But at the same time, I was getting extremely dizzy. It felt like my mind was not built to comprehend the vastness that I was seeing all around me. And when I moved my head, the world lagged before it caught up with me. I felt like if I let go of the rock that I was clutching, I would spin out into an abyss and never find my way out. And at that point, I realized that where I was standing was not actually the summit. About 50 feet in front of me, the rest of my group was climbing one by one onto an actual boulder perched on the side of the mountain that was the summit of Eagle Scout Peak. This boulder looked like the one the Lion King where the baboons holds Simba up to the kingdom. And watching my group climb onto the boulder felt like a slap in the face because it felt like I had already run a marathon and somebody came up to me and said,"You have to run five more miles before we can give you this medal." Because I'd felt like I already reached my own summit by getting over the talus, by keeping a positive attitude, by asking for help, doing everything right. So I was proud of myself and at the same time I felt like a failure because I would be the only person in my 12 person group that would not reach the summit of the mountain we'd been hiking all day. So I stood there holding onto the rock for dear life until the rest of my group came over and joined me. And then we headed back down the mountain, which was a lot easier than hiking up. And it gave me a chance to reflect on what had happened and the lesson I'd take with me back home and civilization much lower to the ground and with much less rocks. Eagle Scout Pete taught me that I should choose to be proud of myself for the things that I accomplish, especially if I've tried and failed at them before. That I can be proud of myself even when I have limitations, when I don't do things perfectly and when it feels like other people have done them better, because all of us have our own unique strengths and challenges and perspectives. And the only reason we fail is if we stop trying. And my dad taught me that while the beach might be a good place to relax, the mountain is perfect for overcoming your fears. Thank you.
Speaker 1:[ Applause]
Speaker 3:And that is a rap. You can make sure to hear the other episodes from our Season 9 Intro to Storytelling graduates by subscribing to Campfire at Home wherever you get your podcasts. And if you liked what you heard, please leave a review on your podcast listening platform of choice. You probably hear it all the time, but it really does help others find our podcast and it supports our students. If you're in the St. Louis area, we'd love to have you come out to an event or take a class. You can visit cmpr.com that's C M P F R.com for all of the details. And for those of you that don't live in St. Louis who just want to know more about the work we do here at Campfire, you can also visit our website at cmpfr.com that's C M P F R.com. As always a big thank you to the Campfire team, Mariah, Ethan, Gabriela, Molly, and Jess. Our photographer, Sarah Wilson, our videographer and podcast producer, Jeff Allen and home for our classes, TechArtista. Tonight's stories were recorded live at the Focal Point in Maplewood, Missouri. Thanks for listening to Campfire at Home. I've been your host Steven Harowitz. Until next time.