Forty days and thirty-nine nights living in the High Sierra wasn’t the biggest challenge that Virginia had experienced since her 15th birthday in January 2018. When she received the news that she was selected for the ARC summer course in Tahoe, it wasn’t even her most life-altering phone call in the last year. On August 18th 2017 Virginia received a call from her Mom, who was living in San Francisco, saying that in 10 days she would have to leave her family, her community, and the life she had always known in Venezuela to move to the Bay Area.
Venezuela has been undergoing severe economic deprivation and mounting desperation. The country’s economy has shrunk in half in just five years; schools are frequently closed due to protests; and violent and petty crime are rampant. Virginia and her Mom are two of the 2.3 million immigrants who have left the country during the past couple of years. “For almost 15 years of my life, I had lived in the same place in Venezuela, with the same community, same weather,” Virginia says.
Just two weeks after arriving in San Francisco, Virginia began school. “I didn’t know the language. I only understood little things…. I was so nervous to speak and write.” Despite that, her enthusiasm and radiant smile made an impression. A history teacher, seeing her enthusiasm for learning, recommended her for Summer Search and Adventure Risk Challenge.
She remembers arriving on the first day of the ARC course and once again feeling those first-day-of-school fears, “When I went backpacking in the beginning, I felt afraid because it was my first time. I was afraid to get lost or be left behind. Everything was difficult for me, especially putting my backpack on. I couldn’t even put it on myself. I needed help from my teammates.” In the first weeks of the course, Virginia was also reluctant to speak English. It was a cascade of new experiences: camping, backpacking, rock climbing, being away from family, and being immersed in the English language.
Virginia says, “My team helped me to keep going. They said ‘You got this’ and ‘I know that you can.’” Her accomplishments from the summer include a long list of the beautiful natural places she visited: Mount Tallac, Lake Tahoe, Lake Aloha, Velma Lakes, Heather Lake, Paradise Lake, and the Gold Lakes Basin. At each stop in the wilderness, she gained new vocabulary and built the confidence to use the words she was learning. “ARC made me feel more confident with myself, with my thoughts, and with my way of seeing things,” she wrote at the end of the course.
When Virginia performed her metaphorical poem at Cedar House in Truckee on July 31st, she hadn’t even reached her one-year anniversary in the U.S. Before receiving loud and sustained applause from the Voices of Youth audience, she concluded her poem with an emphatic final line: “I am brave and strong.” Her ARC teammates and instructors would have liked to add one more adjective to this ending: remarkable.
She had gone from Venezuela to San Francisco to Lake Tahoe in less than one year. She had learned English. She had adapted to living in a foreign apartment in a foreign city and then, just as quickly, to sleeping under the stars in the Sierra during an intensive 40-day English course. She was a poet; she was an adventurer; and she was an incredible example of resilience and determination.
To see Virginia describe her summer experience, watch our new video (filmed and edited by Kelsey Murphey) highlighting students’ experiences during the 2018 Tahoe summer course.