Notes From My Knapsack 6-6-18

Notes From My Knapsack 6-6-18

Jeff Gill

 

Five years, and some lessons still coming

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In some ways, you're lucky you haven't heard about Philmont every two weeks for the last five years in this space.

 

Except I suspect you really have been.

 

It will be five years ago next week that a group of Scouts from Granville headed late one night up to Lake Erie, the Amtrak station in Sandusky, and the beginning of a cross-country train trip to New Mexico and the fulfillment of a long standing dream of mine. I got to be part of a backpacking trek with my son, spending ten days in the backcountry traveling around 100 miles up mountains and down valleys at Philmont Scout Ranch.

 

Philmont 2013 also happened to be the 75^th anniversary of the establishment of the place as a high adventure camp for the Boy Scouts of America, a gift of oilman Waite Phillips. Phillips was not the Phillips 66 guy (they were relations), but he made a fortune in the early oil business, he had a taste for the Old West, and a gift for generosity. 2013 was also the 50^th anniversary of the gift that added Baldy Mountain to the acreage, New Mexico's second highest peak at 12,441 feet. We rode the Southwestern Chief to Raton, New Mexico and right into a big summer . . . for forest fires nearby, smoke in the air, strange colors in the sunsets, and massive rearrangement of schedules.

 

The Scout motto is, after all, "Be prepared" and we adapted, adjusted, and overcame our challenges. My son outhiked me most days, but I was also dawdling to take pictures, write down notes in my little pocket booklet, and just to absorb as much of the experience as I could.

 

I think my son appreciated it; at least he said on our last day "Dad, I want to come back in 2038 for the 100^th anniversary!" So he had to have enjoyed it at least a little.

 

For me, getting to the top of Baldy Mountain was a personal achievement, but getting to do it with my son (okay, he got there five minutes ahead of me, but you know what I mean) was one of those once-in-a-lifetime moments.

 

The trek as a whole, though, was filled with a bounty of all-of-your-lifetime moments. For instance, I came to a whole new appreciation for water, clean water, drinking water. I literally have never drunk a glass of water the same way since those ten days.

 

And while every crew is different, and our crew had our conflicts and tensions as any group of ten males is likely to have on foot for a hundred miles, we looked out for each other, supported one another, and grew together across those fifteen days of travel and trek and the train back home. I have been involved in community building and leadership all of my life, but since that summer I think about group building and setting collective goals very differently than I did before.

 

And I came to deeply respect the man whose vision gave us this tool for leadership development. Waite Phillips was a gusher of aphorisms, most of them still quite quotable, but one of my favorites will round this reflection out: "What is really important is what you learn after thinking you know it all."

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he's still processing what he learned on the trail in 2013, and has more to say next time about that trip! Tell him about your road scholarship at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.