Ep. 660 of the Tom Rowland Podcast is a father-son conversation with Tom's son Hayden Rowland about his first summer as a trip leader for Moondance, an adventure travel company that takes teenagers on backcountry expeditions. Hayden had just returned from leading two three-week sessions through the French and Swiss Alps, his first trip since earning his Wilderness First Responder certification and completing a prior National Outdoor Leadership School expedition in Alaska. He and Tom talk through what it actually took to become responsible for other people's kids in a country he had never visited.
Press play in the YouTube player above to hear Hayden tell this story in his own words, or scroll back up to watch the video.
Moondance is an adventure travel company, based in the Southeast, that takes teenagers on backcountry expeditions around the world. Hayden spent the summer as a first-time trip leader on Moondance's Chamonix trip, leading two sessions of teenagers on a twenty-three day backpacking and travel expedition through the Alps, the Pyrenees, and along the coasts of Spain and Italy, his first time in mainland Europe.
Hayden went through a multi-step interview process with Moondance, including phone interviews and a written survey about his outdoor experience, before being placed on the Chamonix trip rather than one of the U.S.-based trips he expected given his fishing and outdoor background. Before the trip, he completed an eight-day Wilderness First Responder course, then two weeks of intensive Moondance staff training alongside roughly 140 other trip leaders.
During the second session, a stomach illness Hayden's group nicknamed the Pyrenees Plague spread through his kids. One girl became so dehydrated and weak that Hayden and his co-leader called in a helicopter evacuation. His co-leader went out with her, leaving Hayden alone in the backcountry responsible for eleven kids, two of whom were also seriously ill, while he was fighting the same stomach bug himself.
Every participant had to give up their phone for the length of the trip. Hayden said the kids adjusted to being off social media almost immediately. What actually surprised him was how badly they wanted to know the time, to the point that some of them turned his wristwatch around to sneak a look at it. He came away thinking teenagers are more capable of handling boredom and disconnection than most adults give them credit for.
Hayden had previously completed a National Outdoor Leadership School course in Alaska, which he describes as more of a hard-skills, wilderness-living experience. He sees the Moondance summer as building on that experience in a different, more soft-skills-focused way, centered on leadership, community, and being responsible for other people rather than himself. He said the NOLS trip felt more transformational, while the Moondance summer felt more developmental, forcing him to actually become the leader he had only aspired to be before.
Tom tells Hayden directly that he and Hayden's mother watched him do exactly what they had hoped, put himself in an uncomfortable, unfamiliar situation and rise to meet it. Tom also draws a parallel between Hayden calling himself the dad of his group of teenagers all summer and his own experience of early parenthood, trusting that things work out because they have to, even when you have no idea what you are doing yet.
Hayden is my son, and this is one of my favorite conversations I have ever recorded. I have coached him through plenty of things over the years, wrestling, fishing, hunting, but this was the first time he went and did something completely on his own, in a country neither of us had ever been to, responsible for other people's kids. I wanted to sit down with him the morning after he got home, while it was all still fresh, and just hear him tell it in his own words before either of us forgot the details.
Hayden told me that when he opened the email confirming he had been placed on the Chamonix trip, his first thought was not excitement, it was closer to panic, wondering how a company would trust him with a group of kids in a country he had never set foot in. He talked about studying the trip's logistics book so closely that it started to feel real for the first time, and about realizing there was no turning back once staff training ended. How he actually got from that panic to feeling ready is worth hearing him describe.
The hardest stretch of Hayden's summer came when an illness his group called the Pyrenees Plague spread through his kids, bad enough that one girl had to be helicoptered out along with his co-leader. That left Hayden alone with eleven kids, two of them seriously ill, while he was fighting the same bug himself. He described it as mentally exhausting in a way that had nothing to do with the mountains and everything to do with being the only adult in the group who could not afford to fall apart.
Press play in the YouTube player above, or scroll back up to watch the full conversation.
Every kid on Hayden's trip had to hand over their phone for the length of the expedition, and Hayden expected some kind of withdrawal. Instead, he said the social media part disappeared almost instantly. What actually surprised him was how badly the kids wanted to know what time it was, to the point that they started turning his wristwatch around to check it themselves. What that told him about how capable teenagers actually are is worth hearing in his own words.
Hayden had already completed a hard-skills National Outdoor Leadership School course in Alaska before this summer, and he draws a clear line between what that trip taught him and what leading the Moondance trip demanded of him. He calls one trip transformational and the other developmental, and explains why he does not think you can really have one kind of experience without the other. How he thinks those two very different trips fit together says a lot about how he is choosing to grow.
Yesterday's conversation with Hayden reminded me why I like recording conversations with my own kids. I told him directly that his mother and I watched him do exactly what we hoped he would, put himself somewhere uncomfortable and rise to it, and I do not think he fully understands yet what that summer did for him. I also think there is something in the way he described being called dad by a group of homesick teenagers that every parent will recognize, that feeling of having no idea what you are doing but knowing it has to work out.
If you have a kid heading off to do something hard on their own for the first time, or if you are the kid about to do it, I think this conversation will mean something to you.
Press play in the YouTube player at the top of this page to hear the entire conversation with Hayden.
Hayden Rowland, Tom Rowland (host, Tom Rowland Podcast), Turner Rowland (Hayden's brother), Moondance (adventure travel company), National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS).
Hayden Rowland is Tom Rowland's son. He has completed a National Outdoor Leadership School expedition in Alaska, and in the summer covered in this episode, worked his first season as a trip leader for Moondance, an adventure travel company, leading teenagers on a twenty-three day backpacking and travel expedition through the French and Swiss Alps, the Pyrenees, and the coasts of Spain and Italy.
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