The Nature GM

This post shares stories that inspired my love of nature and set the standard for the wonder and tribulation that I try to convey in my TTRPG wilderness travel. It otherwise has nothing to do with roleplaying games, but I think you will enjoy the stories regardless.

Sometimes, in life, you experience something indelible that remains vivid in your mind ever after. I have had such moments out in the wilderness.

We are taking a break from justifying manipulated fantasy art because, frankly, it is more mentally taxing than it might appear.

I would like to share with you two harrowing trips, which became so memorable and beautiful for the very reason that they were challenging. Disclaimer: This was at a time when most people still had cameras separate from their phones. I have some photos, but none of the most dramatic moments.

A Mountain of Fire and Ice

My final semester of college, I took a backpacking trip on a section of the Appalachian Trail in North Carolina. We were coming from Texas, and we were ill-prepared for how persistently, achingly cold that week was.

I have been on group backpacking trips a few times, and it has been my experience that some of the folks will not be prepared physically, mentally, or both for walking up a mountain. This trip was no exception.

There was a freshman, Matt, who complained constantly the first day. He was tired, it was steep, when would we take a break, etc. At some point I snapped at him that we had all said we would stay positive. He looked at me like I had slapped him. But after that, the only words out of his mouth were “Great job, guys!”

He told us later that he had had trouble adjusting to college and rarely left his dorm the previous semester. I do not know what possessed him to sign up for that trip, but it was good he did. He was the only one of us who gained weight that week.

It was so cold at night that any Nalgenes left outside the tents were frozen solid. The freeze-dried food made everyone pass wind, but we looked forward to it because it made your sleeping bag a bit warmer.

Halfway through the trip, my hiking group was climbing up to a lookout tower on a bald in the late afternoon. It was already dark, and it began to snow. We must have looked bone-weary, because our guide passed out Snickers bars that she had packed to celebrate the end of the hike. We took a break on that lookout tower, eating our chocolate bars in the snow, and what we saw was breathtaking.

The panoramic view stretched for miles. To our left was a bright, golden sky of afternoon sun breaking through the gray. To our right was another mountain surrounded by black clouds that seemed to glow with a red fire. It was beautiful. It felt like looking at a scene of an epic fantasy.

The trip was worth it for that moment of wonder alone.

The Day the Swamp Was Melting

Early in my career, I was hired by an arborist company in Massachusetts to spend my days looking at trees with binoculars, seeking evidence of the invasive Asian long-horned beetle. If we found any, the USDA would come in and cut down any potential host trees in the area, chipping them into one-inch pieces.

As I am sure you can imagine, we were popular with the local property owners. (This is a lie.)

Due to a poorly negotiated contract that meant my company was paid per tree surveyed, we were discouraged from leaving the woods to, for example, take a lunch break or use the restroom. I have many stories from this job. The one I want to share today was of the melting swamp.

If we had been assigned to the swamp a week earlier, it would have been ice and easy to walk across. If we had been assigned to the swamp a week later, it would have been water and easy to wade through. But instead, we were assigned to the swamp as it was melting.

Imagine a forest of American elms and red maples, their trunks densely covered with the hairy vines of poison ivy (which, by the way, hold ten times the amount of toxin as the leaves). You are walking on a thin platform of ice that might crumble beneath your step, dropping you a foot into icy water. You jump from ice platform to ice platform, and your balance must be perfect because the only thing to catch yourself on will give you a rash for a week.

The work environment was so atrocious that it became comical. And of course, it worsened over the days we were in the swamp as the ice platforms continued to shrink. I still think back fondly of those days. Ah, how I have moved up in the world.

Nature & TTRGs

There is something about the visual power and excitement of exploring nature that we can experience in movies and video games, but it is difficult to achieve in a roleplaying game. The poison ivy-avoiding ice-jumping challenge is the sort of real world hazard that I have never managed to translate into TTRPGs.

In the real world, if you see a tree with a deep hollow, you simply marvel at it. In a TTRPG, you might stick your hand in it, because if the GM mentions anything, it must be an enemy, an ally, or treasure.

Thank you for joining me on these memories. And even when the weather is foul, remember to spend some time outside.