Remember Your First Time?

Itnever ceases to amaze me how the human mind works. How at one moment I'm unable to remember where I put my tennis shoes just five minutes earlier, yet at the same time I'm able to recall with stunning clarity a moment of my life 35 years ago—a late afternoon sky streaked with a veil of thin, fast-moving clouds; the hot-dry smell of the early autumn field; and the sound of the breeze slipping through the needles of the pines, wresting spent yellow, red and brown leaves from the elms, sending them spinning through the air and scuttling along the ground.

I'm sure any first-year psychology student could tell me that it's simply a matter of the more mundane details of life (like where you put the car keys) being so ordinary, so commonplace, that the mind doesn't deem them significant enough to catalog for future reference; while the sensory-laden experiences are too rich and complex to be incorrectly filed.

I'm not sure that's the whole story, though. I think the events that indelibly mark themselves on a person's psyche are the "first times." Those wonderful, unexpected—often frightening, always enlightening—new experiences that change a person for life.

What are some of your most memorable first times? Remember how you felt? Can you recall how everything looked, smelled, felt, tasted? How they changed you? My short list includes sex, traveling solo, falling in love, swimming underwater and sleeping under the stars. Each of these memorable events is as clear to me today as the moment I experienced them—when they became an integral part of the person I have since become.

I suppose I started thinking about this as I was receiving feedback on the success of the Outdoor Industry Women's Council's (OIWC) recent outreach program with SportsBridge, and while editing this month's In My Opinion column where the theme of first times runs throughout.

For three days this past August, 43 inner-city girls, their athlete mentors and OIWC volunteers camped out on Mount Tam. "The trip offered the girls an independence they haven't had before," reports Kimberly Aceves-Denyer, director of SportsBridge's Athlete Mentor Program. "They challenged themselves, pushed their boundaries, worked in relationship to one another, and felt like they grew as a community...like they were part of something bigger."

Gene Treacy, this month's In My Opinion writer, echoes this sentiment recounting his experience as a volunteer on a Big City Mountaineers camping trip. "None of these kids had ever backpacked before, much less been in a wilderness area," writes Treacy. "They were exposed for the first time to many new products and skills, and [they] soaked up everything we had to offer."

That, to me, is the true beauty of first times. The newness, the feelings, the unexpected opportunitites that open up before your eyes. They change you forever.

I hope all of these outdoor first times help these young people grow into strong, self-reliant adults who continue to find comfort, solace and strength in the outdoors as they go through life. But I hope more than anything that they, in turn, pass along the favor and help another young person get out into the wilderness to develop some first-time outdoor memories of their own.