Scouting’s Sunrise

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A few years ago I had the privilege of leading a team of talented volunteer Scouters from the Atlanta Area Council in designing and producing an extraordinary event to commemorate the Centenary of World Scouting’s founding.

On the morning of August 1st, 1907, Scouting’s Founder Robert Baden-Powell blew his kudu horn on England’s Brownsea Island to assemble twenty boys and begin a weeklong outdoor adventure that became known as the world’s first Scout camp.

100 years later to the day, every Scout, former Scout and volunteer leader throughout the world had a remarkable opportunity to observe the Centenary of World Scouting and look to the past, present and, most importantly, the future of Scouting.

Scouting’s Sunrise was celebrated – literally around the world – on August 1st, 2007. Throughout that day, at 08:00 local time in every country Scouts and former Scouts gathered together to renew their Scout Promise at the dawn of the second century of Scouting. The ongoing celebration represented a global opportunity to connect with the World of Scouting …Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow.

The centerpiece ceremony occurred on Brownsea Island itself, where at least one Scout representing each of 155 Scouting countries was gathered as part of the 2007 World Scout Jamboree. Scouts throughout the world were able to link up via television and the Internet with the Brownsea Island celebrations and those of the 40,000 Scouts at the nearby Jamboree encampment – participating globally in a truly memorable event in Scouting history.

Both as a business consultant and community volunteer I’ve been a student – and practitioner – of leadership for more than forty years. Scouting’s Sunrise stands out as one of my favorite personal examples demonstrating the power of vision-centered leadership. I hope you like it, too. There’s a video entitled “Scouting’s Sunrise Atlanta 2007” that you can view at this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTyF6WSK7Y8&feature=youtu.be

I Will If You Will

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“Oh my gosh!” I blurted. I was lingering over dessert with my family and looking at the brochure I’d received in the mail for a bike ride I’d heard about.

“What, Dad?” asked my daughter Elisabeth, who was newly home from college.

“The Cross Florida Bike Ride is a one-day ride … 173 miles!”

“Whoa!” came her incredulous reaction. She paused. “Well, I will if you will!”

Thus began our biggest bicycling adventure together. She’d joined her brothers Kevin and Brian the previous summer to ride the Bicycle Ride Across Georgia with me, but its longest day was an optional 100-mile “century” I’d ridden. The Cross Florida would be a whole new level of riding for us.

We agreed on a training schedule that would have us riding increasing distances over a six-week period. But weather and work interfered with our intentions and our preparation was less than ideal. Nevertheless, as the first weekend in May approached we gamely loaded our bikes and journeyed with family to our “base camp” at my parents’ home in Orlando.

“This is ambitious!” my daughter declared as we pedaled alongside picturesque coastal waterways in the early morning sun not long after our ocean-side start at Cocoa Beach. Already it was apparent that there were three groups of riders that I’d dubbed Racers, Riders and Tourists. We were in the last group, enjoying a pleasant ride at a moderate pace – even stopping to take an occasional picture! The Racers had quickly formed into hard-riding pace lines and were now miles ahead of us. We would catch up with clusters of Riders at the first few official rest stops, but gradually encountered fewer of them as the day progressed. We were riding steadily at about 17 mph, but we lost time by stopping a lot!

At one point, just as we turned onto a state highway by a large lake, an airboat operator cranked up his fan, nearly knocking me down with a gritty blast. Later, surrounded by orange groves in the beautiful highlands area north of Orlando, we briefly celebrated passing the century mark.

Just twenty miles later a conjoined pair of love bugs hit my face and momentarily distracted me. Elisabeth was riding just behind and somehow our wheels touched. She lost control and went down. Hard. I quickly dropped my bike on the grassy shoulder and ran back to her as motorists from either direction stopped.

“Are you okay?” we all shouted.

“I … think … so …” she answered shakily. I helped her get untangled from her bike and began to remove it from the roadway as she slowly stood up and limped off behind me. “I’m okay,” she hollered to the drivers. She grabbed a water bottle and sat in a small patch of shade next to a bush, gingerly checking herself for injuries. In the crash she’d smacked her thigh pretty hard.

Seeing that she really was okay, I checked her bike. “It’s not damaged,” I said. “There’s a rest stop in just one mile. Do you think you can ride it there?”

We took a long break at the rest stop – eating snacks, drinking fluids, testing where she hurt and how much. “Would you prefer to take a sag vehicle to the finish or keep riding?” I asked.

She thought a moment. “You’re going to keep riding, aren’t you?” more a statement than a question.

“I thought I would, unless you’d rather I didn’t.”

“Then I’m going to keep riding, too!”

“Are you sure?” I asked. “We’ll have to average at least 12 mph to get to the finish before cutoff. Otherwise we’ll be swept by the sag wagon.”

“Then let’s get going,” was her reply.

We rode slowly together, still enjoying the scenery – now hot and hazy in the late afternoon sunlight. Once, in the distance, I thought I spied a very large cat cross the narrow, rural highway. “Florida panther?” I wondered to myself. We stopped briefly at the first of the two remaining rest stops, but as we approached the last one, she said, “Dad, let’s keep going. We can’t afford the time.”

Not long after, in fading twilight we crossed the finish line of the Cross Florida Bike Ride. We were within fifteen minutes of the cutoff.

It had been an ambitious undertaking, a long bicycle ride that we’d enjoyed – and overcome – together. My daughter had dug deep within herself to finish what she’d come to do. To this day she says, “That was the hardest thing I’ve ever done!”

To this day I’m very proud of the tough, talented, wonderful person that she is.

Put the Pedals Back On!

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My grandson Ransom recently sent me a picture of his new bicycle – a snazzy, blue Diamondback city bike. He’s attending college in New England and wrote, “It had been a while since I’d ridden … I had forgotten how much fun it is! It’s been a joy exploring surrounding towns with it. I’ve been going on long rides a couple times a week whenever it’s warm and I just rode my first 50-miler!”

In our next few email exchanges he and I both recalled when he first learned to ride a bike. He’d been on training wheels for a long while and was finally ready – though apprehensive – to take them off.

His dad and I started with the classic approach – holding onto the back of the seat and running alongside while Ransom pedaled and steered – trying to find that magic moment of balance. It wasn’t working very well. He was frightened and frustrated. We were out-of-breath and frustrated.

“There must be a better way for learning to ride a bike!” I declared. So I did a quick Internet search and came across this amazing, counter-intuitive approach.

We lowered the seat of the bicycle as far down as it would go and took the pedals off. This gave Ransom more control. On level ground he could comfortably “push” the bike forward with both feet touching the ground. He felt safer going slow. And all the while he was gaining a feel for balancing and steering.

As his confidence grew in his ability to balance and control the bike we moved to a very slight downhill grade in our driveway. The bike he was learning to ride had hand brakes, so we had him practice using them for slowing and stopping a few times before attempting a longer “coast.” With the seat down and the pedals off, he felt safe and in control – comfortable enough to practice and learn at his own pace.

Frankly, he was doing so well – and having so much fun – that we briefly went inside to get some refreshments. Only minutes later Ransom rushed in and excitedly announced, “I’m ready for you to put the pedals back on!”

And he was.

We put the pedals back on. But we only raised the seat a little bit, so he could easily put either foot down whenever he wanted. In the protected safety of our long driveway Ransom excitedly went back-and-forth riding his uncle’s old Schwinn Frontier – a small, sturdy “mountain bike” with 22-inch wheels I’d bought a few years earlier when my son Brian and I started riding together. As Ransom pedaled around, it wasn’t long before I heard a distinctive “click” as he shifted into a higher gear. He was already exploring what the bicycle could do – how it worked – and what he could do while riding it.

In less than one hour since we first lowered the seat and took the pedals off Ransom had learned to ride!

Brian used this technique to teach my other grandson Sebastian to ride without training wheels at the age of three. And Ransom recently shared it with a college friend who had never learned how to ride a bike – within just a couple of hours they were having a blast riding around campus together!

In how many areas of our lives do we need to “lower the seat and take the pedals off” so we can learn something new? It’s worth discarding conventional approaches – and expectations – when we consider the sheer joy of emerging mastery that could be ours when we reach the point of being ready to “put the pedals back on” and propel ourselves forward using newfound skills.

Gear Loft

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I returned home one evening last week to find my daughter Elisabeth and her fiancé Jude squatting in my driveway with my son Kevin and his wife Lennie. They were in the process of test firing my old MSR Whisperlite backpacking stove and were trying to remember the exact process for priming and then igniting the burner. It seems Kevin and Lennie were introducing friends of theirs to the joys of backpacking. They’d come to my house to borrow equipment from my “gear loft” (actually, Elisabeth was returning a two-person tent she had previously borrowed …).

A gear loft is a rectangle of mesh netting that ties to loops suspended from the top of a tent. It serves as a small storage area for lightweight items like a flashlight – or for drying a damp camp towel or freshly washed socks. I’d dubbed the decked area above my garage my “gear loft” when I realized it was a great place to store tents, sleeping bags, backpacks, bicycle accessories and all the other accoutrements of camping, cycling and canoeing we’d accumulated over three decades of adventures together.

I squatted in the driveway and led an impromptu coaching session on the fine points of operating the collapsible stove – including a safety inspection and some needed adjustments to the venerable burner.

“Dad, when did you get this stove?” Elisabeth asked.

“Hmmm,” I reflected. “I think I bought it for the trek we did on the Nantahala Forest section of the Appalachian Trail.” We both grinned, vividly recalling treasured memories from ten days we’d spent backpacking together in 1990.

Kevin chimed in, “Isn’t this the same stove we used at the Grand Canyon?”

I instantly conjured up a picture of him cooking supper on a South Rim campsite picnic table in 1996 the evening he and his brother Brian and I had just hiked river-to-rim following an overnighter at Bright Angel Creek. We’d gotten a backcountry permit and had packed into the canyon just the day before.

“Yep,” I answered, “and the family camping next to us refilled our fuel bottle and saved us a walk to the store that we didn’t need after that long climb up Bright Angel Trail!”

We lingered on the driveway for a while as a thunderstorm approached – sharing recollections of various backcountry trips I’ve taken over the years with diverse groupings of my children.

I’m very grateful for the terrific adventures we’ve had together – and the ones we’ll have in the future. And I’m very pleased that my children continue to work together as brothers and sister – and with their respective friends and now with their own children – to extend our family tradition of planning and sharing wonderful outdoor adventures.

That’s why my gear loft is always open!

Releasing Resentment

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I browsed the “new” non-fiction shelves in my local public library a couple of weeks ago. One title in particular grabbed my attention: All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis by Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera. As I skimmed the dust jacket blurbs I thought, “I need to read this book.”

I wrote to some friends recently about a recurring struggle with resentment I’ve been experiencing. When the real estate/economic crisis hit me personally three years ago today, my reaction was a sense of feeling betrayed and stuck (stuck as in not being able to move and stuck as in having to pick up the tab). Prayer and a cultivated habit of not paying close attention to the news have combined to help mitigate the anger and resentment I’ve felt whenever I’ve “hung around” my sense of being betrayed and stuck. (Praying about it on one particularly bad day of indulging in “victim mode” the Lord gently and lovingly reminded me that He has personal experience with both being betrayed and getting “stuck” with paying the bill.) Nevertheless the news creeps into my awareness now and then – like a few weeks ago when some new data were released on sales of existing homes – and my anger gets rekindled.

So I read the book. And it helped me get to know the players – there were lots of them – who contributed to the ongoing financial crisis. They’re not saints. Some were downright greedy. Some were incredibly arrogant. Some were unscrupulous. Some were simply naïve. And getting to know them and the background behind their decisions has helped me get a handle on my resentment. For the most part it seems they behaved in ways consistent with their goals, their deep-seated convictions about the way the marketplace is supposed to work, how they perceived their mission in life, and in response to what appeared at the time to be extraordinary opportunities for success.

It got me thinking. Didn’t I buy a townhome through a “no money down” deal? Didn’t I finance that purchase in part with an “interest only” second mortgage? In these personal decisions – and likely others as well – am I not to some extent also accountable for this mess? My own motivations, expectations and perhaps even hopes and dreams may have been not much different from theirs!

For three years I’ve harbored this sense of resentment – most of the time buried beneath the surface. Today I release it. I forgive all the players – including myself – whose decisions combined to create this financial crisis. I accept that we all thought what we thought and did what we did and that now we are where we are.

It’s time to move on. Finally, I feel like I’m truly ready to do so.

Leap Year’s Day

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We’re expecting the birth of our fifth grandchild anytime now. So I wasn’t surprised to find myself thinking about February 29th as a prospective birthday. I think if I were about to be born and had any say in the matter, I’d choose to be born on February 29th – just because!

It’s intriguing to think you might celebrate only fifteen birthdays and yet have lived sixty years. But how would it work out actually? Would you have six decades of wisdom and experience and occupy the body of a teenager? Or would you be just as weathered, worn and weary as if you’d had sixty birthdays?

In his poem Evangeline – A Tale of Acadie, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow astutely uses winters and summers to tell us the ages of two characters, respectively old and young.

Benedict Bellefontaine, the wealthiest farmer of Grand-Pre,
Dwelt on his goodly acres: and with him, directing his household,
Gentle Evangeline lived, his child, and the pride of the village.
Stalworth and stately in form was the man of seventy winters;
Hearty and hale was he, an oak that is covered with snow-flakes;
White as the snow were his locks, and his cheeks as brown as the oak-leaves.
Fair was she to behold, that maiden of seventeen summers.
Black were her eyes as the berry that grows on the thorn by the wayside,
Black, yet how softly they gleamed beneath the brown shade of her tresses!

Maybe counting birthdays isn’t the best way to measure the living of life.

Counting blessings would be better.

Being a blessing – better still!

Time Capsule

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February 8th marks the anniversary of the founding of the Boy Scouts of America.

Fifty years ago I was a Boy Scout. I was in two different troops, actually, because my father was in the Air Force. Just after I earned First Class rank my family got transferred and I became a member of Troop 11, Wiesbaden Germany – part of BSA’s Transatlantic Council.

Now a Boy Scout Troop affiliated with the military experiences frequent leadership turnover. Not long after I joined Troop 11, we got a new Scoutmaster named Andy Ryan. Andy was one of those awesome combinations of Baden-Powell, Green Bar Bill and Norman Rockwell that is every Scout’s ideal Scoutmaster. It wasn’t long before we idolized him.

Andy saw enormous potential in the many opportunities and activities presented by the Fiftieth Anniversary of the BSA in 1960. So with the full support of an incredible Troop Committee, he saw to it that we did everything!

  • We earned the Fiftieth Anniversary Achievement Award.
  • We went to a District Camporee where we camped Jamboree style with other troops from all over Germany.
  • We participated in a special Council Encampment at Camp Mohawk in England with troops from all over Europe.
  • And to cap it all off, early in 1961 we planted a fifty-year time capsule.

This was no “coffee can buried in the woods” … but rather a sealed copper cube that was securely placed beneath a concrete monument dedicated to world Scouting. The inscription on the monument specifies that the time capsule was to be opened in 2010 in conjunction with the 100th Anniversary of the Boy Scouts of America.

Over the past few years I’ve managed to locate several other alumni from Troop 11 and six of us were able to be in Wiesbaden on May 8, 2010 when the time capsule was opened as part of a special ceremony.

Now, what would motivate six guys to fly across the ocean to open a time capsule they planted as Boy Scouts fifty years ago? It’s not really about what’s inside the box. A press photo from the 1961 dedication shows the sorts of things that are in the time capsule: canteen, cook set, flags, handbooks, insignia, uniform parts. There were some surprises, certainly, but the trip was not about the stuff.

I think we all wanted to be there as a tribute to our late Scoutmaster, Andy Ryan and to the quality of the Scouting program he saw to it we experienced that year and every year he led our troop.

I was thinking about Andy a lot during the BSA 100th Anniversary in 2010 and had this insight: The real time capsule is us! Andy was planting “time release capsules” that have opened up throughout the last fifty years as we each have served as volunteer leaders in our communities and in the Scouting movement.

So my challenge to you is this: as you work with the youth of your community, what kind of time capsules are you planting?

The Groundhog’s Honeymoon

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Cheryl and I were married on February 2nd 1968 – Groundhog’s Day.

We were both working and attending classes full-time at Michigan State University, so our honeymoon plans had to be short and simple. A friend suggested Marshall, Michigan as a suitable getaway.

It was late evening when we finally did get away – taking our leave from a modest reception we’d hosted in our new apartment. We set out into a snowstorm, happy and snug in our VW bug. The only thing I remember about the drive is that we got stuck in the snow. We had pulled off the road to switch drivers and when Cheryl eased out the clutch we simply spun-in-place. I got out and pushed.

I recall that we arrived on the outskirts of Marshall around 2:30 a.m. There was a motel. No reservations. No lights on either. I found a trailer out back and knocked on the door. The resident manager took pity on us and checked us into a room. The bed featured something called “magic fingers” so I put a quarter into the slot. With a deep hummm the entire mattress started to vibrate. We giggled together as we literally shook off the cares and chaos of our wedding day (and night).

Morning was well underway when we finally stirred to discover a day that was bright, white and beautiful. We went to a pancake restaurant and ate a hearty breakfast. Then we explored Marshall, Michigan – a quaint and picturesque flashback to nineteenth century small town America.

I don’t recall what else we may have done, but I know we browsed in two or three antique shops. We were looking for something – some special memento of the day, the visit, the starting of our life together. And we were both charmed by a little, green bud vase with the tiny figures of a boy and a girl together amidst intertwined tendrils of ivy.

Then we went home. To study and to work. And to live our life together.

Spring is starting to show already here in Atlanta. The other day we went for a walk and Cheryl picked a daffodil – among the first to bloom this year. It speaks a cheery “good morning” from the little green bud vase.

Honeymoon Bud Vase

One of the first daffodils of spring. Happy anniversary!