A cold thrust of wind and rain lifted the tent off the ground. I clutched the top with my numbed fin­gers, find­ing pur­chase at the point where the poles crossed in the cen­ter. The tent went hor­i­zon­tal in the air, and I braced to keep it from fly­ing into the lake. I wres­tled it down when the gust slack­ened. It had been cold and rainy all day, as I hiked to over 10,000 feet in the wilder­ness of Ecuador. I man­aged to fix a bro­ken tent pole that night, crawl into my dry refuge and squeeze some emer­gency en­ergy gel into my mouth while thaw­ing in my cold-weather sleep­ing bag.

I’m not crazy. I did not have fun. Yet two more times dur­ing my five-week solo trip to Ecuador I re­turned to the wilder­ness to revel and roam in moun­tain land­scapes with­out en­coun­ter­ing any­one else for days. Ex­plor­ing na­ture wasn’t the cen­tral pur­pose of that trip. It isn’t even the cen­tral pur­pose of this story. What I re­ally want to tell you is how I got there. What made me cut my­self off and not look back to safety and com­fort when what I wanted to do was out there.

Two years be­fore Ecuador, I dis­ap­peared from my fam­ily and friends early in the sum­mer. Only a few months out of high school, I showed up to col­lege with only what I was wear­ing. I waited in line that first day to get my blood drawn, my di­men­sions mea­sured, and my head shaved. From the first shouted com­mands of the up­per­class­men, I learned how to tune out every­thing but the in­for­ma­tion re­quired to stay out of trou­ble.

I never fit into the mil­i­tary mold. I re­mained pen­sive be­hind the poker face of at­ten­tion and com­pli­ance. In­stead of work­ing out or study­ing, I did just enough to get by. I ded­i­cated my­self to per­sonal pro­jects like speed read­ing, com­pet­i­tive chess, or sneak­ing away with books that would broaden my per­spec­tives about the mil­i­tary. Al­though I ex­celled, I was un­happy that my fu­ture pur­pose was still un­known.

Fur­ther­more, I didn’t con­nect with the per­son­al­ity typ­i­cal of the place. I didn’t con­nect with the mil­i­tary’s es­capists ei­ther. Es­capists have the at­ti­tude of tol­er­at­ing things until the next chance to pre­tend to be nor­mal; that is, to get out and party. One week­end we were al­lowed out of the cam­pus gates, but I didn’t have any plans. I still felt the need to get away and I took the op­por­tu­nity, walk­ing out the gate with a small pack and an extra pair of clothes. We weren’t sup­posed to roam around town out of uni­form, so I used a bath­room in a mu­seum nearby to change. I then slipped under a bridge and along the water’s edge to stash my uni­form under some rocks. I en­joyed my week­end: walk­ing for miles, read­ing Cat’s Cra­dle and sleep­ing on the ground. I spent the first night in a park, where I had a sur­prise awak­en­ing when a dog sniffed out my lo­ca­tion on his morn­ing walk.

I de­cided that the mil­i­tary wasn’t the place for me, so I trans­ferred after my sopho­more year. Nor­mal col­lege drew me in. I was on board again with a le­git­i­mate or­ga­ni­za­tion that I had no reser­va­tions about. I was doing some­thing valu­able and re­spected by main­stream so­ci­ety. But I was still jug­gling per­sonal goals. I sped up my goal to learn a sec­ond lan­guage be­fore grad­u­a­tion. I looked up lan­guage schools in dif­fer­ent South Amer­i­can coun­tries and or­ga­nized my own trip. I talked on the phone with the head of a Span­ish school in Quito, and booked my flight.

I read up on the coun­try’s pol­i­tics and his­tory the week be­fore going and made my first friend in the air­port, wait­ing for the flight from Miami. On the flight over, I had to re­peat to the in­cred­u­lous tourist sit­ting next to me that I was nei­ther sight­see­ing with a friend nor re­ceiv­ing some kind of in­sti­tu­tional sup­port or class credit. I was on my own, push­ing my­self to learn out­side of my com­fort zone.

I’ll al­ways come home to recharge, to share ideas with my base of friends, and to build my con­fi­dence in more tra­di­tion­ally ac­cepted pur­suits. But to re­ally push my bound­aries out­ward I need to take a step back from com­mon ex­pe­ri­ence and ven­ture out into the world with a new vi­sion of what is pos­si­ble in life. Some­times wait­ing for the right op­por­tu­nity is just too nor­mal to work.