Anger
can be as deadly as a bullet to the head or it can be a slow poison that
manifests in stress related disease. Anger is ubiquitous on this planet and it
has plagued us from the time of the first humans to last night’s network
shooting report from Atlanta. Even the Divine is not immune to anger; our
religious writings are full of wrath and vengeance. There is no escape from
anger.
My
greatest lesson in anger was taught to me by a group of young people for whom
anger was a constant companion. My first expedition as a wilderness guide and
counselor was with a group of 11 teenagers who had been released from detention
centers in the hopes of completing our program as a pathway back home. From the
beginning of the course, when we were not preventing physical violence from
their pent up hostility, we were dealing with verbal violence released through
sarcasm and profanity.
As a
rookie guide I was armed with a variety of “armchair” advice from book authors
who had never tried to help a group of unruly teenage boys pitch their tents in
the rain while being drained of blood by mosquitos and biting flies. I was
convinced that I should never allow my frustration or my own anger to be seen,
and keeping those emotions in check was difficult. The physical effort involved
in a river expedition was enough to assuage a great deal of everyone’s anger,
but the quiet times were volatile. My fellow instructors, veterans of outdoor
experiential education, counseled me to take a firmer line. “You can’t be their
friend,” they told me. “They will walk all over you and it will be that much
harder to keep them safe.” They were
right, but it took a series of extraordinary events to teach me a valuable
lesson about anger.
We put
eight canoes on the water just below Macon, Georgia in February of 1992. We
were loaded with provisions for at least 7 days on the river before resupply,
11 angry teenage boys and three wilderness guides who had no idea that the
heavy rainfalls of the previous weeks would soon raise the Okmulgee River to well
above flood stage. The boys had just
been through a week of training in canoeing and water safety and we were as
well-prepared as possible, but the lazy, black water rivers of South Georgia
are always full of surprises, especially when heavy rain sends them out of
their banks.
We put
in on a chilly, overcast day when the water temperature was cold enough to make
hypothermia a very real danger for anyone exposed for too long. The boys were
excited to be on the river and a little frightened. Most of our clients were
from the inner city and anything beyond asphalt and electronics was foreign to
them. I was in the lead boat with one of
the stronger paddlers from the group of kids. My co-instructors were paddling
together bringing up the rear. About 10
miles downriver and 20 miles above Hawkinsville, Georgia, we had a boat
capsize.
Life
jackets are essential to all river trips and all of us were properly equipped.
However, when a tree falls into the river or when the river rises to the level
of tree branches, a new danger is created that is referred to as a “strainer.”
When a canoe hits a strainer, it can turn sideways and fill with water, quickly
flipping passengers and gear over and under. The force of the running water can
pin and entangle a boater with a real danger of drowning, even with a life
jacket. The cold water of February was an immediate threat to the two boys
clinging to the branches of a downed tree.
As my
co-workers positioned themselves to rescue the capsized passengers it was left
to me to manage the other nine kids now drifting aimlessly downstream. They
were not listening to me, and we were in jeopardy of having another
capsize. It was essential that I collect
all the remaining canoes in an eddy to “gunwale-up,” or to bring the boats side
by side, each passenger hooking one leg into the adjoining boat to form a
makeshift raft. At a loss as to what to do to get the kids to listen, the words
of a veteran counselor came to me. He
had said, “It is OK to let them see that you’re angry. You will know when it’s
the right time.” This was definitely the right time, and as my mild manner was
replaced by the spirit of my old drill instructor, I let fly with all the
bellowing anger that I could muster. It worked. The kids finally began to
follow instructions and we were able to eddy out and wait for the rescue going
on upstream.
All’s well that ends well. Yet it
bothered me somewhat that I had lost my temper. It was in debriefing the event
a few days later with my Director of Operations that the lesson was made
complete. My D.O. was a combat veteran of Vietnam who had been working with
adjudicated youth for over 20 years. “You’re always going to get angry, Don,”
he said. “There is no way around it. And
the kids you are working with are always going to be angry. Anger is not the
problem. It is as natural as grief or happiness or any other emotion. The key
issue is how you express that anger and what you do with it. You used yours to
keep some kids from drowning on the river. You will be angry with them again,
but if you can show them your anger – and the proper way to handle it, some of
them will learn.”
