Date: 9/4/02

AMC LEADERSHIP

There’s probably nothing more important in the world right now than leadership. It seems hard to believe but just fifty years ago great leadership in this country came from politicians and corporations. Their legacy is the prosperity we enjoy. Fifty years before that the AMC was leading the way toward preserving and protecting the environment and opening up the wilderness for our enjoyment. 

AMC chapters are now continuing to provide leaders more actively than any other volunteer organization I can think of. This is a huge community service not only because of the activities we lead but because leadership is a commodity desperately needed by society to meet the challenges before us. According to Jared Diamond the destruction of habitat is one of two major forces facing humankind that we will either acknowledge and address or perish by. He sees the process as having started several thousand years ago and reaching its peak during the lives of our children and grand children. He is a biologist and observes the interface of humans and our niche in the environment within the context of all creatures. There are basic rules of biology about habitat destruction that apply to humans as surely as they apply to ants or any other creature alive on this planet. Interestingly, he is hopeful in spite of our record so far. He is hopeful because, unlike any other creatures that we know of, humans have the capacity to observe and acknowledge what is happening to us and our environment and to make change. As a social worker I have come to marvel at the human capacity to change. Alcoholics stop drinking, couples living with spousal abuse stop beating each other, distraught parents start to parent their children, gang members enroll in college, sexually active teens postpone second pregnancies. Every behavior imaginable has been confronted and changed. 

Obviously we can not all be environmentalists in the professional sense. The issues are complex and a reasonable resolution of one dilemma often creates additional problems. We can, however, all be leaders and we are. Whether we actually lead an activity or simply take up the leadership role from time to time as a trip participant, the AMC folks at the local level, that’s us, practice leadership all the time. Let me give just a couple of examples. The paddling component of the Maine Chapter has been in transition. After many years of highly skilled paddlers taking not so skilled paddlers under their wing, many of those highly skilled paddlers have moved on leaving not so skilled paddlers to swim on our own. We not so skilled paddlers will take other even less skilled paddlers under our less than sturdy wings as they get their feet wet. In the process others reach out to help us. For example, Ken Kaiser leads paddling trips for the Boston Chapter. When there were too few of us novices to even have a safe trip his welcome mat was always out. His leadership is phenomenal. Not only does he provide an opportunity for people like myself to enjoy one of the best white water rivers in New England, he does it in a way that maximizes the leadership capacity of every group participant. When you lead something like a white water paddling trip you have to pay attention to lots of detail. You also have to give people room to sink and swim. When coming up to Lower Poplar Hill Falls the other day with a trip he was leading I noticed how the experienced paddlers magically appeared in the eddies along river left just sitting there waiting. I suspect no one had to tell them that that was what they were expected to do. Ken was back with the less experienced paddlers on river right helping us see the value of taking a look at what we were about to get into without actually telling us that was what he was expecting us to do. By the time we had run Poplar we all had had a chance to take on some leadership responsibilities leaving us each feeling a sense of accomplishment and a useful part of the group. That leadership is priceless. 

The above scene has happened hundreds of times with Maine Chapter members in the lead. Right now our paddling skill for leadership is at the Pontook level so that is what we do. The cycle will again come around for us to take on Humpty Dumpty and Big Mama and I suspect we will keep the door open to take some Boston Chapter novices with us. The point is that leadership is always growing and developing in groups like ours and other outdoor oriented groups as well. People like Bud Gilbert and Doug Field from PPCS are outstanding leaders. 

Another example, closer to home, are the Tuesday night bike rides led by numerous Maine Chapter folks including myself. One of the challenges of leading such events is simply getting the word out. Listing the trips months in advance to make the deadlines of the print media leaves a lot to be desired for a schedule that changes from moment to moment. Debby Andrews has taken on the challenge and by cutting a few corners, using some new tools, sharing leadership responsibilities and staying on top of a lot of changing variables, she has facilitated Tuesday night bike rides for a very appreciative group of bikers here in southern Maine. 

Such leadership, born and nurtured in recreation,  can also be applied to habitat rehabilitation. The notion of “Think Globally and Act Locally” is sometimes difficult to grasp. The global issues are clear. For example, the world ain’t gonna work with some of the people having lots of resources and others having little or none and no hope of greater equity. It also ain’t going to work to take one third of my resources and send them to people living in the Sahel. Sharing societal resources on a global scale is a major challenge. Like all challenges, however, the first step is acknowledging the problem. This is done locally by people in small groups wondering together about how things are and then about how things might be. We “lay environmentalists”, who know and use the outdoors, have a special opportunity to give leadership to habitat maintenance and the leadership we build while having fun is a great vehicle for doing so. We need to let our thinking percolate up so that the “professional environmentalists” can visualize some solutions other than the same old same old blaming you or I for not being adequately conservative, having too many children, driving the wrong kind of vehicle or even, absent mindedly, picking a flower in the wilderness one day. 

If there are solutions to people beating people they love or drinking themselves into the ground or amassing credit card debt, then there are solutions to the negative impact we are having on our habitat. Jared Diamond is right to be hopeful.

Jim Tierney, Maine Chapter Chair