It’s been many years since I was in school, but fall has always brought me back to that feeling of starting a new journey. This year, I actually am returning to school for the first time in several decades, having enrolled in a writing program where I hope to marry my two passions – SAR and writing. It’s an exciting time. Fall is also when my SAR team starts reaching out and having a lot of interactions with people who are interested in joining a search and rescue team, which often feels a little like going back to school. We spend a lot of time educating people about SAR, what we do and what the work involves.
Sometimes it feels like we are trying to talk people OUT of joining, but really I think we try to be realistic about what the job is and what it isn’t. The work isn’t for everyone. People often think it is full of adrenaline and excitement. And while it can be, for sure, it is also sometimes just boring walks in the backcountry. I always tell people who are interested in joining because they want to ride a helicopter that I went on missions for six years before I rode in a helicopter. I also have spent seven hours traversing across ankle-breaking scree fields, testing my fear of heights along cliff bands and found no trace of the missing person. For as rewarding and exciting as SAR can be, it is more often just doing the very physical drudgery of crawling through brush or scrambling up a drainage and knowing that a person is NOT in your area.
SAR is a lot of great teamwork and time in the outdoors. It’s amazing what we accomplish as volunteers and the things we do for people we have never met. But the flip side of it is the long hours, time away from family, the searches with no find, the emotional burden of not finding resolution for a family or for bearing witness when they receive tragic news. Again, it isn’t for everyone. Why is it for us? For me, it is multifaceted. I love the collaborative work with my teammates, the shared goal and the focus on the mission. The intellectual challenge of working to solve the puzzle of where a missing subject is and either crafting the assignments to find them or working in the field to locate them is deeply satisfying. Many of us also love the physical challenge of being deployed in remote areas or particularly difficult assignments.
Whatever your reasons for doing the work, I hope that this fall finds you enjoying the outdoors and maybe even starting a new journey.
Welcome back to school!
Molly Williams
