Type Two Fun

by Peter Walsworth, Former Academic Dean

In the spring of 2017, I knew I was leaving Maybeck. Not because I wanted to leave Maybeck but because I knew that Benjamin, Kate, and I were moving to Rhode Island to be closer to family. As a last hurrah, I got to lead a Special Program to the California desert with Maybeck legend and all-around extraordinary human Trevor Cralle, someone I consider somewhere between a best friend and a brother. Early in the trip, in Death Valley, we were heading out for the day to go hiking in a slot canyon. On the way out of the campground, the ranger asked us, “You all know we’ve got weather coming?” We did not. He explained that there was a windstorm coming in the afternoon. Lots of dust, and anything that wasn’t staked down was going to wind up in Bakersfield. “Type Two Fun,” he said with a grin, “You know, the kind that’s not fun at all at the time, but it’s fun in retrospect.” Off we went.

The slot canyon cut into the rock at an angle perpendicular to the wind, so our hike was sheltered, and we spent the morning in ignorant, windless bliss. But on the hike out, as we approached the mouth of the canyon, the air beyond the opening was yellow with flying dust, and when we stepped into the open, the wind knocked us sideways. After a white-knuckle drive back to our camp, we returned to a chaotic tragicomedy: most of our tents flattened to the ground with their flies detached and luffing in the wind, and all of them filled with a deep layer of fine sand. The students–their faces blasted with grit, their ears and scalps filling with desert dust–were utterly delighted. “THIS IS TYPE ONE FUN!” one of them screamed over the roar of the wind as they gathered belongings strewn about the site, “IT’S FUN RIGHT NOW!”

While I was squarely in the Type Two camp right then, I took their point. I’ve thought about that moment—and others like it—a lot since then. So much of how you respond to life has a lot to do with who goes through it with you. Trevor used to always say, “There are a hundred students, around two hundred parents, twenty-five faculty… on a given day, you figure something’s gonna happen.” This prospect was always exciting to Trevor (and fits snugly with another of his quotes: “I’ve never been bored for a single second in my life.”). I always found that it was sharing those experiences–Type One and Type Two alike–with the Maybeck community that made them particularly rich.

These days, I work in admissions at a small private school in East Providence, Rhode Island. I love my school and my job, but I miss Maybeck. It is a place like no other: the bonds among and between faculty and students–forged in camping trips, special programs, and the everyday shared experience of school–are deep and unique, something that I never took for granted then and that I still appreciate now. For those of you who went to Maybeck: I’m sure you know what I mean. For those of you who are students now, I hope that you have so much Maybeck Type One fun. And for everything else, trust me: it’s Type Two.

Peter Walsworth, Former Maybeck Academic Dean