Billy Parish S’99: Looking Closely at the Stories We’re Told
How TMS encouraged Billy Parish to connect with the land, connect with others, and connect with himself
Billy Parish attended the Mountain School in Spring 1999. After his semester, he graduated from Collegiate School in New York City, then attended Yale University. In 2003, Billy was awarded the Brower Youth Award for his work leading the Energy Action Coalition. Since then, he has worked to advance an ecological consciousness in the business world and political realm, coauthoring a book, Making Good, and founding Mosaic, a clean energy investment platform. Learn more about Billy’s work here or on his LinkedIn.
Lucretia Penfield (TMS’s Director of Admissions, Enrollment, and Financial Aid) spoke with Billy to learn more about how his time at the Mountain School shaped his values, perspective and sense of agency.
“In my view, the curriculum and the program at the Mountain School are more relevant and vital than ever given the social and ecological challenges that we face. The Mountain School is one of the best training programs I know of for young people who want to be part of the solution. ”
How did you learn about the Mountain School and what inspired you to attend?
My older sister had a transformative experience at the Mountain School. I went to an all-boys school in New York City, which I’d attended from 1st grade all the way through 12th grade. Having grown up on the 14th floor of an apartment building on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Vermont was an imaginary landscape for me. A lot of my favorite books from childhood took place in the wilderness. I wanted a deeper connection to the land, and I felt that spending a semester in a co-ed environment would complement the all-boys education I’d had.
How did your time at the Mountain School impact your intellectual development?
I tell this story frequently: in my Humanities class, the teacher had assigned a book called Ishmael. I will never forget reading that book in my dorm one evening. There was an analogy in the book of our civilization as a vehicle, and people are furiously pedaling on it and it goes off a cliff. The people in the story think they are flying, but actually they are in freefall. That image was a metaphor for where we are as a civilization. I thought to myself, “We’ve achieved amazing things, but we may be headed towards catastrophe.”
That idea was just not an idea I had considered before. It wasn’t the story I was told growing up. And Ishmael was a novel about the stories that our society tells, and whether or not they’re true. It was the first wake-up call, the turning point, that set me on the path that I am still on to this day.
But my time at the Mountain School wasn’t just about intellectual development. It was also about the evolution and strengthening of my values, my life’s purpose. It was my first time connecting deeply with a place, falling in love with the land. I often talk about the Science Site experience where I got to deeply understand a piece of land and how it came to be that way. I became a vegetarian under the influence of another student, and I met my first true love who I dated on and off for six years.
The Mountain School was the hardest school I ever went to, even though I went to Collegiate and Yale. I found not only the courses but the experiences on the farm and in the woods very challenging. The Solo was a coming of age experience for me. I looked back at my journal from those 72 hours alone in the woods, and during those days of solitude and independence it was the first time I felt like I became a man. (See below for a description of Billy’s Mountain School Solo, excerpted from his book, Making Good).
I actually still have a solo practice, I’ve probably done 15 solos in the 25 years since I left TMS. I did a three-week solo between high school and college, and shorter ones at other turning points in my life. When I have things I need to process I use that practice to reset, get quiet, get clear. I typically bring one or two questions and maybe some books into the woods with me... I don’t hold the questions too tightly, but I do hold space to process them.
How have the experiences you had at TMS shaped your career?
One way that impacts every single student who attends is the perspective change that comes with living in community with students from around the country. Being taken out of your comfort zone and put in a place with other people your age is a formula for transformation. A well-constructed experience in a different place with a cohort of peers is going to create growth and greater self understanding.
But another facet of the experience that particularly shaped my life was the real focus on loving this place and this land. Working on the farm, studying my Science Site to understand how human presence has made that specific patch of earth evolve over the years, stewarding the woods, marveling at the different seasons and times of day… these experiences gave me a connection to nature that inspired me to do what I can to save it. And that, I believe, is a core part of the Mountain School’s mission.
When I think about the practical skills I got, I immediately think of the Humanities class. In that class, there was a big focus on self-reflection and on public speaking, which are both incredibly useful skills that I use regularly as a leader. The classes I took were so good and were more focused on useful skills than most schools are.
Finally, I’d say that my relationships with the amazing faculty at TMS really inspired me, and gave me a number of models to look towards as I embodied my identity as a young man. If I may speak from my experience as a student and now a parent, during your junior year there are diminishing returns from parental influence and advice. Young people are looking for other peer and adult role models and influences. There were a lot of really positive adult influences at TMS, from my dorm head and teachers, to the adults who led our work periods and advised us.
“Working on the farm, studying my Science Site to understand how human presence has made that specific patch of earth evolve over the years, stewarding the woods, marveling at the different seasons and times of day… these experiences gave me a connection to nature that inspired me to do what I can to save it. And that, I believe, is a core part of the Mountain School’s mission.”
What role do you hope TMS can play for young people today?
It’s rare to have an opportunity to be part of such a vibrant learning community and to connect to this really beautiful part of the world. It’s also special to be part of a program that so many people have had positive life-changing experiences going through, and to be able to connect with others during college or after based on these shared experiences.
In my view, the curriculum and the program at the Mountain School are more relevant and vital than ever given the social and ecological challenges that we face. The Mountain School is one of the best training programs I know of for young people who want to be part of the solution.
A Memory of Solo from Spring ’99
Excerpted from Making Good by Billy Parish S’99
Used with the Author’s Permission
I’ve always been down for an adventure. So when the opportunity to spend three days and nights alone in the woods came up during my semester at the Mountain School, I jumped at it. Each of the kids on the trip had their own gorgeous spot of woods at the headwaters of Reel Brook in the Kinsman Range, just next door in New Hampshire. We were given a big orange whistle to blow if we ran into trouble. Each morning we’d go down to the stream and raise a little green flag, which a teacher would later come around to check and lower. But for the flag, we were all alone to be wild and weird, to run and shout, get naked, build a sleeping fort, and watch the animals or bugs or the flowing brook.
Being 17 and really alone with myself for the first time in my life was just a self discovery like no other. I journaled a lot.
Morning of Day Two: “Joyce Carol Oates’ tirade “Against Nature” is worthless. I can’t imagine a person that wouldn’t be moved by time alone in the woods. There is a reason Thoreau spent time at Walden Pond, why Chris McCandless went to Alaska, why the U.S. preserves national forests, why [The Mountain School] sends their students into the wild. There is an ancient bond between humans and nature, where the meaning comes from is immaterial: it is there; it has always been there.”
Afternoon of Day 3: “For the first time in my life I feel like a man. Going on this solo, taking charge of every aspect of my life and doing okay was the missing rite of passage toward manhood. I feel entirely prepared to take responsibility for myself; I feel prepared, upon hearing a whistle blow, to run as fast as possible to that person to lend a hand. I am entirely independent and I feel this freedom in every action...I expect that I will use the strength, confidence and independence gained on this solo to be more self reliant.”
I had lived, played and gone to school almost entirely within a square mile of the Upper West Side of Manhattan. I had doting parents who proofread my papers for school, cooked my meals and otherwise took care of all my material needs. More than my high school graduation, more than my confirmation at Church, those three days were a coming of age.
Many of the students at the Mountain School were from cities, and the idea of three days alone in the woods was alarming for some. We had read a little of Thoreau’s Walden, and also Into the Wild, the true story of Chris McCandless, not much older than us, adventuring on his own into Alaska by himself and never making it out. But we all made it out, and saw each other and ourselves with new eyes. There were some things we shared passionately, and others private, unexplainable still. The solo meant different things for everyone in the class, but everyone seemed to emerge more confident, purposeful, mature, even wiser.
To date, about a half dozen times in my life, I’ve found a way to get away from it all, to have quality time just with myself. The summer before my freshman year in college, racked with anxiety and about to separate from my then-girlfriend, I secluded myself in my grandfather’s Pennsylvania cabin to track deer, read Marquez and Eco, and journal about who I was and where I was headed.
Confused and depressed the semester after 9/11, I got away to a house on Long Island that belonged to my Dad’s friend during Thanksgiving break and cried a lot and worked to put the world back together in my head. It was after this solo that I really stepped up my activism, bringing an energy that got almost half the Yale campus to sign the “Eco-Pledge,” saying they wouldn’t buy products from, work for or invest in 10 big companies (Pepsi, Staples, CitiBank, etc.) until they took specific steps to reduce their environmental footprint. We started crashing their recruiting sessions, raising the stupid bad things they were doing and turning away potential Yale grads from jobs with their companies. Quickly the message filtered up, the companies freaked out and many of them did exactly as our campaign demanded.
The summer in India, feeling alone and struggling with the poverty and environmental degradation I saw there, I found solace and direction on a few long, mountain hikes. I came back from India burning to make change.
Solitude is a lot like sleep -- it’s a quiet period when our mind regenerates itself. If sleep is when we physically rest and recover, moments of solitude are when we recover from the ceaseless barrage of life. The pressures we all face of modern life are walled out, and we are left to reflect on our experiences and make sense of our ideas, to learn about ourselves and grow from our conclusions.
A good Solo is actually not very hard to pull off. You don’t need a parents’ second home or money to travel to a far-off locale. Even a full day and an open mind to really consider and explore what’s going on with you at the moment can change your life.
Fully disconnect. No internet, no phone, no quick status updates telling people “It’s so amazing to be alone!” The setting matters some too, so take a little time if you can to ask around. My best have involved a lot of time outside and in nature, but you should have good equipment and may need to ask a friend to check on you if you’re gone more than a couple days. Set aside however much time you need. Jesus needed 40 days in the desert after baptism to work through what it meant to be the son of God, divine and also human. So you probably wouldn’t need that long.
The personal discovery and growth you can achieve on a Solo can give you that flexible edge you need in order to shift, adapt, and be open to changing direction. Often, we don’t know what’s wrong in our lives until we’re completely alone, without a schedule or outside voices, without spikes of competition or envy, simply unspooling thoughts, reflecting, really probing ourselves for hypocrisy, dissatisfaction, longings, and disappointments. In those discoveries there’s an opportunity to right our path.