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A walk in the woods

Today I had the pleasure of taking a walk in the woods with junior Christopher Yates. A few weeks ago, Chris had approached me to see if there were any chance that he might help cut an additional trail to our cross country network on campus as the capstone event to his quest to become an Eagle Scout. Partially based on his love of cross-country, partly the woods, and partly the school – it felt like an appropriate culmination to him. After a few needed conversations, we gave him the green light. My sense is that, with the help of about a dozen others, he completed his task on a recent weekend.

He emailed me recently to see if we could take a walk to see the results of his work, and today was that day. At 11:30 a.m., the rain was still coming down, and I questioned whether we would need to reschedule.  I envisioned what some of the trails must look like in the woods, looking down at our footwear. After debating for an instant, I thought to myself if this young man could do all of this work, then the least I could do was put up with a few mud puddles. The walk was certainly worth it.

Surely I was impressed by the trail itself, and its usefulness for our students in the future. But learning about his motivations and aspirations were far more impactful. I had a chance to hear about the core values of the Eagle Scouts, and his history of attending wilderness camps throughout his life. In fact, he will be hiking the last 200 miles of the Appalachian Trail later this summer, and I asked him how he passes the time on these extended hikes in the absence of technology of any kind. His passion for these sorts of experiences was pretty contagious, actually. As we trudged past the bog, around to our top field and back through the Fogg parking lot, I started to realize that he had given me a sliver of his experience in that small moment in time: I had left my office without technology, walked in the woods in the middle of the day, and connected with another human being. And I didn’t have to walk 200 miles to do it.


Chris is a remarkable young man, and I can’t wait to hear when he achieves his goal of becoming an Eagle Scout. But I head into the long weekend reminded that pausing to connect with people, particularly one of our amazing students, is a truly remarkable thing.

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