Whilst adventure-based experiential education traditions have long-standing claims of progressive, democratic learning potential, little research has examined practice from within democratic theories of participation and learning. Focusing on a complex network making up a disturbing interaction in an outdoor education programme, I posit forms of structural management privileging institutional design blockaded democratic forms of interaction when bids arose, while simultaneously identifying the peripheral "un-structured" symbolic spaces beyond the care-gaze of educators as necessary sites of creative emergence. Drawing on the work of Lather [Lather, Patti. 1996. "Troubling Clarity: The Politics of Accessible Language.Harvard Educational Review" 66 (3): 525-546], I explore the peripheral boundaries of traditional ethnographic writing, decentering norms of finality and conclusivity, and invite the reader into a critical interaction with "a shifting text" [Babich, Babette. 1994. "Nietzsche's Philosophy of Science: Reflecting Science on the Ground of Art and Life." Albany: State University of New York Press, p. 27] and a chaotic moment in the programme.