When I was sixteen, I spent a month canoeing with a bunch of juvenile delinquents from New York. This was through a program called Outward Bound, which I had signed up for of my own volition. They, on the other hand, had been sent to the boundary waters of Minnesota by a judge who ordered “wilderness training” as an alternative to juvie jail.

My group of young criminals included a skinny dude with a peach-fuzz chin and lifeless eyes, a cruel rich boy and his toady sidekick, and a big shaggy guy who looked and sounded like Jack Nicholson. The four of them were horribly mean to me and the other two women, and when I wasn’t cowering from their bullying, I was plotting ways to get even.