“My Summer with YLA” — Student Reflection

When I hugged my mom goodbye and stepped onto the Youth Leadership Adventures (YLA) van for the first time this July, leaving my phone behind, I had no idea what to expect. At first, the ride up to Newhalem was silent, everyone was timid and worried about making the wrong impression. It’s crazy how fast a group can go from strangers to family. 

I’m a non-binary 17-year-old from Oak Harbor on Whidbey Island. My town is a military town, so there’s a constant influx of people from all over the world, but I’d never gotten to talk as deeply with people whose experiences were so different from mine until this trip. I got up the courage to speak what little Spanish I could with my group, many of whom were native speakers, and learned invaluable new phrases. 

I was even lucky enough to be with a group that had not only another (awesome) non-binary student, but a non-binary YLA instructor as well! I had the chance to talk with this instructor about their experience traveling in South and Central America, and listening to them solidified my own hopes of traveling as a queer person, changing my dream to a tangible goal. 

On the van ride home, as we eagerly shared songs and exchanged numbers and information and promised to stay in touch, it seemed laughable that we were ever scared to talk to each other. More than that, it seemed impossible that there had ever been a time where we hadn’t known each other. To have swam, hiked and paddled through rough waters with these people, to have slept in tents  by them and learned from them and shared every second of every day with them… it all adds up to an irreversibly bonding experience.

At its core, this is what YLA does: it transforms a dozen people—from different backgrounds, different towns, different cultures—into one community, learning together and loving each other and belting songs with each other as they drive back home from one of the best experiences of their lives!