Mistakes, Suprises, and Hope
Mike Smith | OSI Executive Director
A little over fourteen years ago, in my first week of work in my new job, I was invited to attend the Limestone Ski Club’s monthly meeting. Limestone is a small town in Aroostook County, ME. It was once home to an active Airforce base, but that closed in the 90’s taking most of the population with it. That didn’t deter a deeply devoted group of retired community members from keeping the Limestone Ski Club alive. They groomed local trails, put on an annual ski race, helped with the local winter carnival at the school, and volunteered to lead an after-school ski program throughout the winter.
That evening’s meeting took place around a club member’s kitchen table with tea, cookies, and a clear agenda – trail grooming for the upcoming season, sourcing ski equipment to get more kids on snow, and volunteers to help lead the youth program. I don’t remember the specifics of what got worked out that evening. But all these years later, I still remember how it felt to sit around that table with a group of people that cared so much about getting their community outside. I recall the challenges they were dealing with; trails, equipment, programming, and leadership. This laid the foundation for a framework we still use today at OSI.
More importantly, I remember recognizing a belief that I shared with the people in that club. It’s a belief that there is an abundance of potential for people, especially young people, in these rural communities to develop a profound sense of place through the outdoors. I’ve had the opportunity now to engage in work connected to this belief for many years. I’ve learned some valuable lessons since my first night with the Limestone Ski Club. So, while its customary in the typical end-of-year non-profit write-up to talk about impacts, I’d like to share some learning instead.
Mistakes
For years I believed that the communities we work in need more capacity to sustain outdoor sport. That’s not the mistake. It’s very true. The mistake was this; I used to think there would be some magical point at which community outdoor initiatives would reach “sustainability.” If we provided enough planning, guidance, training, and support, communities would have what they needed to succeed. Come to find out, I was wrong.
This past year has been a big year of progress and development. We expanded our efforts with technical assistance across Maine. In the Katahdin Region, we worked with wonderful partners to develop over five miles of new trails, expand the programs and services of the Katahdin Gear Library, develop collaborative youth outings, support new curriculum in schools, and add staff, interns, and local youth to all these initiatives. Despite this success, communities and partners need ongoing support to maintain this progress. So, have we created sustainability? It doesn’t feel that way. What we have built, though, is a deeper, stronger team of people engaged in the work.
Sustainability, it turns out, isn’t a place you reach, it’s a process you continually engage in. Now, instead of imagining our work as building these initiatives to a point where we step away and they exist on their own, I see our work as continually adding and developing the capacity needed to keep this collaborative process growing.
Surprises
You won’t be surprised to hear that as the Executive Director of the Outdoor Sport Institute, I LOVE outdoor sports. Paddling, biking, running, hiking, skiing – I am engaged in these activities constantly. What might surprise you, though, is how little I think about them in our work. So what am I contemplating instead? This year I realized that most of the time it’s relationships.
I suppose this could be filed above under “mistakes,” but there was a time when I thought that if we could introduce people to outdoor pursuits, they’d regularly engage in the activities on their own. The equation I was using started with this idea; expose people to outdoor sport, they would have profound experiences leading to a stronger sense of self, and this potential would then equal an unlocking of community and relationships. It’s a great story, but it rarely works that way. Instead, we’ve realized that we work in the exact opposite direction. We start with relationships, then experiences, then outdoor sport.
As we stepped into more communities this year with planning and design work, I was always surprised how questions like “What are the experiences you’re hoping to create?” or “What relationships are you trying to foster?” would alter the conversation. Suddenly, mountain bikers were talking about families enjoying nature, paddlers were talking about friendships, and no one was talking about their sport.
Certainly, there are instances when a person falls in love with an activity like skiing or biking all on their own. It’s also true that people participate in outdoor sport purely for the enjoyment of the activity. We are all social creatures, though, and often it is the relationships we form with friends, family members, teachers, and mentors, that guide us towards sustained involvement in an activity. This is particularly true when that pursuit is as intimidating, uncomfortable, or confusing as outdoor sports can be. After all this time I’m still surprised by how much more effective it is to foster positive relationships that then lead to ongoing engagement with outdoor sport, rather than the other way around.
Hope
The shared belief that I found as I gathered around the kitchen table with members of the Limestone Ski Club years ago has, so far, defined the trajectory of my career. This work, while shaped by belief, has been driven by the hope that when people develop a deep sense of place, and are empowered, they can have a lasting, positive impact on that place.
After the many lessons since that first evening in Limestone, and all the progress just in this past year alone, there’s more reason than ever to lean into this hope. It’s an exciting time to be doing our work at OSI. If we can be humble enough to keep uncovering our mistakes, wise enough to learn from them, and curious enough about the things that surprise us, then we will be successful in turning belief and hope into reality.