I ask the group a simple question: which direction is north? We stand together in a clearing, surrounded by Douglas Fir and Western Red Cedar, within earshot of the highway that cuts through this coastal landscape. The sky opens above us in patches between the canopy. A light rain falls. I watch as they turn in circles, glance at one another, pull out their phones. Most cannot answer. They have not navigated across unfamiliar landscapes, have not learned to orient themselves by sun or shadow or the shape of the land. They do not know where they are.

This disorientation troubles them. It should. We are mammals who evolved to range across every kind of terrain, to read the world through touch and scent and the angle of light through leaves. For hundreds of thousands of years, knowing where you stood in relation to the horizon was not an academic exercise — it was survival. Our ancestors carried maps in their bodies, in the accumulated knowledge of place passed down through generations. To be lost was to be in danger. To find your way was to be human.

But something has shifted. Many of the people I work with — bright, capable, resilient — have been trained to navigate entirely different landscapes. Most have backgrounds in academia, so they know how to move through bureaucratic systems, how to satisfy rubrics, how to deliver what assessors expect. They have spent years learning to orient themselves not by the world but by predetermined outcomes, measurable objectives, and clearly articulated goals. They know how to find the answer someone else has already decided is correct. What they do not know is how to find north.

My Beef with Learning Outcomes

The language of learning outcomes has colonized the realms of education and professional development so thoroughly that many practitioners no longer notice its presence. Every course, every workshop, every training session now begins with a list: by the end of this experience, you will be able to… The outcomes are specific, measurable, achievable. They promise certainty in an uncertain world. They tell us exactly where we are going before we have taken a single step.

This seems reasonable. After all, how can we teach if we do not know what we are teaching? How can learners learn if they do not know what they are supposed to learn? The logic appears sound, but it rests on a fundamental misunderstanding of how human beings actually grow and change. It assumes that learning is a process of moving from point A to point B along a predetermined path, that the destination exists before the journey begins, that the educator knows what the learner needs to discover.

In my experience — across decades of work with learners in universities, in forests, in museums, in treatment settings — the most profound learning happens in the opposite direction. It emerges from disorientation, from not knowing, from the vulnerable space between certainty and confusion. It happens when someone discovers something they did not know they were looking for, when the world reveals itself in ways no outcome could have predicted. Learning outcomes, for all their apparent precision, create a kind of tunnel vision. They focus our attention so narrowly on the destination that we miss everything else.

The negative consequences of this narrowing have accumulated over the years, slowly and then all at once. Students arrive at university having spent their entire educational lives chasing outcomes. They have learned to ask not “what interests me?” but “what will be on the test?” They approach learning as a transaction: I give you the correct answer, you give me the grade. Curiosity — that ancient engine of human discovery — has been trained out of them, replaced by compliance and performance. They know how to deliver what is expected. They do not know how to wander, to wonder, to get lost and find their way back carrying something unexpected.

What Gets Lost

On a previous visit to the clearing where I ask about north, while we were gathered together talking about our impressions of the landscape, one of the participants shared his amazement at seeing so many different kinds of trees. He had not been fully aware that there are many kinds of trees, and his experience of this diversity activated a deep and numinous response within him. His voice carried wonder — not the small, fleeting fascination of clicking through images online, but the ancient wonder that comes from direct encounter with mystery.

I had not planned this moment. It was not among my learning outcomes. I had not written “participants will discover that there are many kinds of trees” anywhere in my course materials. How could I have predicted this? How could I have known that this particular person, on this particular day, would look at the forest and suddenly see it for the first time?

This is what gets lost when we insist that learning must be predictable and repeatable, when we demand that every educational experience march toward pre-specified goals. We lose the moments of genuine discovery, the encounters that change how someone sees the world. We lose the unpredictable pathways that learners find for themselves, the insights that emerge not from instruction by experts but from their own curiosity and attention. We lose, in other words, the very thing that makes learning alive.

The contemporary research on learning supports this. Studies of creativity consistently find that breakthrough thinking happens not through linear problem-solving but through what researchers call “insight experiences” — sudden moments of clarity that arrive unbidden, often when the mind is wandering (Kounios & Beeman, 2015). Neuroscience shows that the default mode network — the brain state associated with daydreaming and aimless thought — is essential for integrating information and making novel connections (Immordino-Yang et al., 2012). Educational psychologist Kieran Egan (2005) has argued that our obsession with objectives has impoverished learning by stripping away narrative, emotion, and the power of wonder. The evidence accumulates: some of our most important learning happens precisely when we are not driving toward predetermined outcomes.

And yet the machinery of educational institutions grinds on, demanding outcomes, requiring assessment, insisting on measurement. Accreditation bodies want to see learning objectives. Funding agencies want to know exactly what will be achieved. Administrators want data, metrics, proof that learning is happening in ways that can be documented and reproduced. The institutional pressure is relentless, and it shapes everything — what gets taught, how it gets taught, who gets to teach it.

A Different Kind of Orientation

Several years ago I facilitated a group outing to a local park adjacent to the Fraser River. Heavy rains had raised the water level, and as we came around a bend in the trail we were halted by a large puddle. The water was deep as our shins and wider than anyone could have jumped, stretching all the way across the trail and into the dense underbrush. No way around, no easy way through.

We gathered together and talked about what to do. No one wanted to return to the parking lot so soon. I did not want them wading through deep water in their running shoes and jeans. We were at an impasse — literally.

Then Andrea, who was wearing high rubber boots, noticed a log on the far side of the puddle. She thought it might be light enough to drag into the water, might be high enough for us to walk across. She splashed over, hefted one end, and pulled. The log came to rest perfectly across the puddle, slightly bent, arcing above the deepest point.

What happened next was not in any learning outcome I had written. Andrea stood in the middle of the puddle and held the hand of the first person crossing. That person then stationed themselves on the far side to support the next person. We built a system, improvised in the moment, each person helping the others across the slippery bark. Even Erol, a participant with a developmental mobility impairment, made his way across, shuffling slowly, holding tight to Andrea’s supportive hand.

The crossing was quiet, focused, attentive. Everyone helped with mindful clarity. They were emotionally and cognitively engaged, applying physical skills together toward a common goal that was larger than any individual need. They found multiple solutions to intricate problems without explicit leadership or guidance from me.

Later, when we talked about the experience, Andrea spoke about feeling — for the first time — that she was a valued and essential member of a community. She made a unique and important contribution. We made it across because of her. Erol reflected on his equality with others, his sense of strength and agility, his well-earned physical empowerment. These were new feelings for him, new and much welcomed.

I could never have designed this learning. Crossing a puddle was not part of my curriculum. I would not have thought to create a challenge exercise involving a log — I do not generally like challenge exercises, do not use them much, and prefer activities that encourage roaming and wandering rather than structure and fixed pathways. And yet here was profound learning, the kind that stays with people for years: Andrea finding community, Erol discovering strength, the entire group building something together that none of them could have managed alone.

It was not me but the log — the conveniently located, spontaneously glimpsed, creatively used log — that enabled this learning. The object appeared at the right moment and led us to our own discoveries. This has been my consistent experience with unplanned moments in nature, in museums, in any setting where I step back and allow the environment to reveal what it will. Beyond my planning and curricular guidelines, beyond my goals and intended outcomes, the world offers what is needed in ways that surprise and help.

The Academic Resistance to Uncertainty

The story of the log troubles most of my colleagues who work in academia. When I share such experiences, they often ask: but what were the learning outcomes? How do you assess that? How do you know they learned what they were supposed to learn? The questions reveal the depth of our institutional commitment to predetermined paths. The idea that profound learning might happen without my orchestration, that participants might discover things I did not plan for them to discover, that the most important moments might be the ones I do not foresee — this seems unruly, maybe even irresponsible.

I understand this reaction. Embracing uncertainty means relinquishing control. It means admitting that we do not always know what learners need, that our outcomes might be too narrow, that the most important learning might happen in the gaps between what we intended. For institutions built on accountability and reproducibility, this is heresy.

But outdoor, object-based facilitation experiences invert the usual norms. Learning takes place outside rather than in classrooms. Learning is unpredictable and unique to each participant rather than standardized and repeatable. Learning is a deeply emotional process — which, ideally, also contains intellectual discoveries — rather than a primarily intellectual process that should not involve emotions. The widespread discomfort with feelings, with the messy and uncontrollable aspects of human experience, pervades academic contexts and creates significant hurdles for both instructors and learners seeking to work in ways that honor emergence and surprise.

As neuroscientist Antonio Damasio (2018) affirms, cultural activity “began and remains deeply embedded in feeling. The favorable and unfavorable interplay of feeling and reason must be acknowledged if we are to understand the conflicts and contradictions of the human condition.” When we strip feeling from learning, when we reduce education to measurable cognitive outcomes, we create a diminished version of what learning can be. We create, in effect, a map that shows only the roads and ignores the terrain.

Wayfinding as Metaphor

Learning to find north is not, ultimately, about navigation. It is about developing the capacity to orient yourself in unfamiliar territory, to read the signs the world offers, to find your way without a predetermined path. It is about building the confidence to be lost and the skill to notice what helps you find your way back.

This kind of wayfinding — this ability to move through uncertainty with attention and curiosity — is exactly what people need in recovery from addiction, in healing from trauma, in navigating the complex challenges of contemporary life (in other words, in all the work that I do). The problems that bring people to treatment, to therapy, to workshops on trauma-informed practice are not problems with clear solutions. They are not linear journeys from point A to point B. They are wandering paths through unfamiliar territory, where the destination is not known in advance and the route must be discovered.

And yet we continue to organize our helping systems around predetermined outcomes. Treatment programs promise to move people through stages. Therapeutic models outline the steps to healing. Professional development workshops list the competencies participants will achieve. We create maps before we understand the terrain, then wonder why people get lost despite following our directions.

The alternative is not to abandon structure or expertise. I prepare carefully for every outing. I know the parks we will visit, the trails we will walk, the potential hazards we might encounter. I have spent years developing the skills to facilitate group experiences safely (whether inside or outdoors). But within that structure, I create space for the unexpected. I plan for unpredictability. I design activities that invite wandering and discovery rather than marching toward fixed goals.

This requires a different relationship to knowledge and authority. It means asking not “what am I trying to teach them?” but “what conditions will help them discover what they need?” It means trusting that people find their way when given the opportunity, that curiosity and attention are more powerful than compliance and performance, that the most important learning often happens in the margins of what we plan.

The Practice of Not Knowing

Standing in the clearing, watching people turn in circles trying to find north, I resist the urge to simply point them in the right direction. Instead, I invite them to notice: where is the sun? How does the land slope? What does the wind tell you?

Some find their way through observation and deduction. Others remain uncertain, and that is fine — the uncertainty itself becomes part of their learning. They begin to understand what it means not to know, to be genuinely disoriented. They begin to develop the tolerance for ambiguity that will serve them far beyond this particular forest, this particular question.

With this particular group, we returned to the question of orientation again and again. We practiced reading landscapes, noticing patterns, developing the skill of wayfinding. But we also practiced something more fundamental: the capacity to be lost without panic, to not know without shame, to trust that the path will reveal itself if we pay attention.

By the end of the group sessions, most of the participants could point north. But more important than that specific skill is what they learned about learning itself. They discovered that the most meaningful insights often come from unexpected places. They experienced the power of curiosity and attention. They found that disorientation — that vulnerable, uncomfortable state of not knowing — can be the starting point for genuine discovery rather than something to be feared and avoided.

This is the learning that matters. Not the outcomes I could have written in advance but the deep shift in how someone moves through the world. It cannot be predicted or reproduced. It cannot be standardized or assessed. It emerges from the encounter between a person and their experience, in the gap between certainty and confusion, in the space where wonder lives.

We need more of this kind of learning. We need educational approaches that honor emergence and surprise, that create conditions for discovery rather than dictating what will be discovered. We need practitioners willing to step back and let the work happen, to trust the process even when we cannot control the outcome. We need institutions brave enough to embrace uncertainty, to acknowledge that the most important learning might be the learning we cannot measure.

I stand in the clearing and watch them turn in circles, searching for direction in the sky and the trees and the shape of the land. They are disoriented, uncertain, perhaps a little afraid. This is exactly where we need to begin.

References

Damasio, A. (2018). The strange order of things: Life, feeling, and the making of cultures. Pantheon Books.

Egan, K. (2005). An imaginative approach to teaching. Jossey-Bass.

Immordino-Yang, M. H., Christodoulou, J. A., & Singh, V. (2012). Rest is not idleness: Implications of the brain’s default mode for human development and education. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7(4), 352-364. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691612447308

Kounios, J., & Beeman, M. (2015). The eureka factor: Aha moments, creative insight, and the brain. Random House.