In 1976 I enrolled in an outdoor expedition through the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) out of Lander, WY. Founded by the great mountaineer Paul Pezoldt in 1965 NOLS has become an international organization offering all manner of wilderness experiences. I participated in their classic 35 day wilderness expedition in the Wind River Range. Back in the 70s all NOLS expeditions practiced outdoor backpacking principles of ‘Leave No Trace’, a set of 7 practices for minimizing environmental impact. This eventually led to a partnership with the US Forest Service in 1994 and the founding of the non-profit organization Leave No Trace Center For Outdoor Ethics. On our trip these low impact environmental practices were taught in every aspect of living in the outdoors - digging and using latrines; only using loose dead wood or sticks for fires (no breaking branches, even off fallen trees); leaving no waste behind; not scorching rocks from fires; and leaving campgrounds just the way you found them (as if no one had been there before you.) We slept under a tent fly, no tent, and even encountered a couple of nights of snowfall mid-summer. A sagging tent fly in the am from 6” of snow nearly suffocated me. We built make-shift sauna baths using hot granite rocks, mud pads, shovels, pails of water and several tent flys for an environment to create steam and sweat out weeks of grime. Crawling out of the sauna and jumping into glacier fed water provided the most intense head rush. Terrible for the cardiovascular system but heck we were young. On July 4, 1976, the bicentennial, we climbed Fremont Peak, the 3rd highest mountain in WY at 13,743ft. I learned a lot about myself on that trip - good and difficult. I learned about teamwork, leadership, attitude and relationship building. I learned how to recognize and follow game trails, read topo maps, and survive a survival segment of the trip that concluded the last 5 days of the trip. Coming back to Lander to decompress meant hitting every eatery until our stomachs hurt, recovering and then repeating. It took weeks to regain lost weight.