Are you familiar with the “joy to suffering” ratio?

If not, it’s time to re-introduce one of the most popular teachers at Cary Academy. Gray Rushin has been a chemistry teacher for over 30 years, many of them in the Upper school at CA. His unique classes and labs are always a favorite for students. However, his years on the trail may steal the headlines. Mr. Rushin is the group leader for the Wilderness experts and Leadership elective, which is now in it’s 2nd year at Cary Academy. His love for the outdoors has led to numerous adventures, both in school trips and individual experiences.

“The more you get better at it, the more you can enjoy it. I call it the joy to suffering ratio.” Mr. Rushin is now an experienced and avid outdoorsman, but that wasn’t always the case. His first wilderness trip was actually in 2009 during the initial Discovery Term year at Cary Academy. He was 44 years old at the time. “I discovered backpacking in Discovery Term. It was the first backpacking trip of my life.” Over time,  there were many opportunities to learn. Once, he wore the wrong shoes while hiking through Southern California, which left his feet covered with blisters. “That was a lot of suffering,” Mr. Rushin joked. That is a part of the reason Mr. Rushin loves going on repeat trips on the same trails, where you can directly apply your learned experiences and see the change in your personal “joy to suffering” ratio.

For Mr. Rushin, one of the most important themes is fear, and how to overcome it. “Recognizing fear, and how to mitigate it, is a big part of the wilderness.” Part of that is ranking your fears, and developing the tools to confront them. In the outdoors, the environment is always changing, presenting a constant challenge. There are dangers that can present themselves at anytime, including with the weather, animals, or supply shortages. “Less experienced people tend to pack their fears” according to Mr. Rushin. “When planning for a 30 day trip, you can’t carry 30 days of food or water. If you pack your fears, you could end up carrying so much water, it’s a crazy amount of weight.”

The wilderness is not just about physical but mental strength. “I think it’s more important to be mentally stronger than physically stronger. People might physically be able to keep going, but mentally they give up and lose the will to move on. I guess their suffering to joy ratio just gets too high.”

In his almost 15 years of CA trips, Mr. Rushin counts on the experiences he has gained to make the trips and safe as exciting as they can be. “I have done 42 school trips and have never lost any food to animals. We hang the food from trees and branches. It’s called bear bagging.” However that doesn’t mean things always go perfectly as planned. Last summer while stopping to take pictures of the high country, he came across a group of grazing sheep. One of the sheep starting chasing him. “I started running. I looked behind me and others had joined. I was sprinting down the side of a mountain with my backpack on. I turned back around thinking I had gotten away and they were actually closer! It took everything I had to get to a safe spot..” That’s a story Mr. Rushin will never forget. “I imagine many endings for myself, but death to a bunch of angry sheep is not one of them.”

Mr. Rushin sees many similarities between what is learned in the chemistry classroom and what is learned in the outdoors. Being in the wilderness is an opportunity to appreciate science and nature at its most basic form, which then makes it a great learning environment. Whether it’s during a chemistry experiment or on the trails, the goal remains the same. “It is pushing their boundary to discover a lot about themselves…and in a hurry.” In both settings, there is important team work necessary to be successful.  Just like many of his students in class have to get comfortable dealing with chemicals and Bunsen burners, they may have to learn how to start a fire or pitch a tent for the first time. “My motivation is really to be with them (my students) when they experience it for the first time and watching it through their eyes.”

So what is next? “I go with what inspires me.” Following more regional trips in early November and Thanksgiving, there is a upcoming trip in December to the Patagonia Trail in Chile, which will reach the last town before Antarctica. Next summer will likely include getting back to a biking trip. Repeating the 2700 mile Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico to Canada is also something Mr. Rushin has his sight on. As long as the calculations in the “joy to suffering” ratio keep coming up high, there are many more outdoor adventures that await!