A teacher and his antecdotes

Tim Hampton, an adjunct instructor of outdoor pursuits, has a knack for telling stories.

"Tim's best quality? I'd say it is his story-telling," said Matt Misicka, a course coordinator in the biology department and a former student of Hampton's.

"I've had students take my classes because they want to hear the stories," said Hampton.

He uses antecdotes as icebreakers or to make points about the use of equipment or improper actions, Hampton said.

"And there's lots of (stories). I mean, golly," said Hampton. "And I have students who are terrified they are going to become a story."

Among the classes that Hampton teaches in the School of Physical Activity and Educational Services are rock-climbing, whitewater rafting and hot-air ballooning.

Hampton said he begins all his classes with a social commentary on society's state.

"The beginning of all my classes, I start out with a statement," Hampton said. "That statement is that we live in a society that when it's cold, we turn up the heat. When it's hot, we turn on the air conditioning.

"We drive around in cars that are more luxurious and comfortable than the vast majority of homes that people live in worldwide. We are fat and lazy as a society, me included," he said.

Hampton said he has few uneventful trips with his classes, which leads to his stories.

"We've had a lot of different personalities and interesting characters," Hampton said.

"We had (a person) show up for a long-term kayaking trip with no utensils. He thought everyone else was supposed to provide for him," he said. "We don't know where that came from, but he took a notebook computer on this river trip, and destroyed it the very first day out there because he didn't pack it in plastic. He finally got his eating utensils because somebody had extra and they rented it to him at a premium."

A woman once kicked Hampton in the head on a trip because she heard gunshots far off in the distance.

The trip was in an extremely rural area of Appalachia where poaching is common because people have to feed their families.

"On a clear night, you're going to hear echoes through the valley, and gunshots are not close," he said. "They're way, way off in the distance.

"She woke us up convinced there was someone with a machine gun nearby."

Hampton said people in terror have historically woken him up at night to report their fears.

"I have had people wake me up (saying) that someone's coming into camp with an Uzi," he reminisced.

He said people tend to be nervous about sleeping in the woods on his trips.

One of his stories involves a group of nurses who were terrified to sleep in the woods without tents.

"What happened was, on this particular trip, we got to the trail head and walked in a short distance. It was a beautiful night - not going to be any rain or anything. But it was so late I didn't want to go any farther," he said. "So I said, 'Don't set up tents. Get out the ground sheets, lay them down and go to sleep.'

"They were freaking out. I thought there was going to be a mutiny and they were going to kill me. So I said, 'Okay, here's what we'll do: You guys sleep in the middle, and I'll have me and my people sleep around you.'

"But they bought it. So we finally got everyone bedded down, and by this point it was around midnight and everyone was pretty beat," Hampton said.

"A little bit later someone stood up, and they were stepping over people because they had to go the bathroom," Hampton said. "Now remember a lot of people (were) very nervous about the animals, like they were going to eat them or that kind of thing." he said. "Somebody reached out and grabbed this girl's ankle and went 'Grr...'"

Hampton said the women howled.

In addition to being an experienced camper, Hampton is also an avid rock-climber.

"When I started rock-climbing, there was only one book on rock-climbing. Climbing at that time was very new in the United States, and the industry was only just starting to come up with the rope," he said.

"Some of the historic figures in climbing I've known and climbed with," he said.

Since that time, he said he is not necessarily happy at the direction climbing has taken.

"It's moved away from the love of climbing to something different. It's more of a fad for a lot of people," he said. "There are a number of people today who call themselves climbers but have never climbed on real rock.

"It's like being a marathon runner without ever leaving the treadmill. It's climbing by the dots. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, I'm just saying it's a distorted view."

Hampton doesn't just talk like a man accustomed to roughing, however - he is one.

When we hike we sometimes don't use tents, he said.

"People are shocked when I say, 'We're going, rain or shine.' And we've had trips where its rained from the moment we left here to the moment we got home; it never stopped," he said.

He reassures his students that they won't die and reminds them that they'll enjoy it.

"Some people don't understand what cold is. I have a whitewater class happening this quarter I am teaching at 7 at night. Two weeks from Saturday we have a trip, and people ask me, 'What's the weather going to be like?'"

"And I say, 'I don't know. We could have snow; it could also be 70 degrees. We're going to go no matter what. Water temperature will probably be about 58 degrees.' You hear the gasp in the room," he said.

Students will ask if that is cold and it sure is, but I teach them how to dress for it, he said.

"Suck it up. And when you get off the river, you will get the best warm shower you have had in your entire life. And you'll know that you're alive," he said.

Be it cold, wet, dirty or whatever other conditions his students are left in, they usually love the experience.