Trusting the journey: Embracing the unpredictable and difficult to measure nature of wilderness educational expeditions

This paper is a collaborative autoethnographic investigation of the unpredictable and difficult to measure nature of wilderness educational expeditions. It is a reflexive journey of storytelling and critical analysis that demonstrates the power of story-based research as method. The research investigates three assertions: First, there are inner corners of outdoor adventure education’s (OAE) “black box” that are unknowable; second, that as outdoor educators, we must trust the journey to present opportunities for learning, rather than assuming that we can plan and anticipate specific and predictable educational experiences while ‘on trip’; and third, that OAE researchers need to embrace diverse research methods in order to gain a deep and rich understanding of the inner workings of the black box.