I’m a Student Again, Part 2B: The Dream That Waited

 Yosemite Mountaineering School wasn’t just a program. It was a cathedral tucked in the wilderness—stone fireplaces, wood floors, big beams that looked like they’d been lifted straight from the forest and blessed with permanence. The building itself breathed purpose.

The director was the kind of man who felt like he’d walked out of a sepia-toned movie about taming the American frontier. Rugged, but kind. A storyteller, a teacher, the kind of calm you want tethered to your rope when you’re dangling off a granite cliff with adrenaline trying to crawl up your throat.

He knew when to speak and when to simply be there—anchored, grounded, present. He was, in that moment of my life, a figure of quiet strength I hadn’t known I was looking for.

I wanted to be like him.

Not in the surface-level hero worship way, but something deeper: I wanted that life. The clarity of it. The rhythm. The deep inhale of mountain air and the way people listened when he spoke.

I wanted to become an outdoor guide.

That was the dream. The next step was supposed to be figuring out how.

But then… life.

After the course ended, I hitched out of the park to Lee Vining, where I sat on a bench for six hours waiting for the next bus home. It was one of those liminal days—caught between two versions of myself. The dreamer on the edge of something new, and the kid who still had to go home and deal with a girlfriend, a job search, a college decision, a mother, a sister, a handful of friends all tethering me back to my familiar life.

And just like that, the dream… slipped.

It didn’t crash. It didn’t burn. It just quietly got tucked into a drawer marked “Maybe Someday.”

So now, all these years later, when the move to Quincy started to take shape, I reached back into that drawer and pulled the dream out again.

Enrolling in the Outdoor Recreation Leadership program at Feather River College wasn’t just about learning something new. It was about returning to something old—something I’d left behind on a granite wall under the watchful eye of a man who taught me how to breathe when breathing felt impossible.

And maybe—just maybe—I’ll learn to become that calm presence for someone else, someday.