Business Lessons from the AT (Appalachian Trail): Part 3

Perception 

Is it possible I met God in the morning and the Devil in the afternoon while hiking on the AT one day? I’ll tell the story and you decide. It was early morning on a Friday, and we had been on the trail 30 minutes, slowly making our way up a long ascending ridgeline toward an area called Devil Fork Gap, it was then that we came upon Pastor Kevin. Hiking with the sun at his back down the ridge to meet us, he was friendly, attentive, and curious about my son and I and our journey. He was a pastor at a nearby church and Fridays were his day off. He liked to spend that time walking the trail he said, meeting people, and handing out pamphlets. When he asked if he could give us a pamphlet to read, we declined, saying we didn’t want the extra weight in our packs, and we were serious. Yes, it sounds utterly ridiculous, but after some time on the trail, you begin to obsess over the weight of your pack to the point that even an infinitesimally light slip of paper feels like too much. Bottom line, we didn’t take pastor Kevin’s pamphlets. I’ll confess, the weight of paper and ink aside, I wasn’t particularly interested in what the pamphlet said, the slightest whiff of religiosity or dogma sends me running for the hills. For me religion should focus on helping others in ways in which they wanted to be helped, period, not offering them doctrine they haven’t asked for. I could tell immediately Kevin was a nice guy, but I also sensed he was mostly focused on his quest of distributing pamphlets. While I wasn’t interested in knowing something I already felt I knew too much about (religion), l was interested in knowing more about Pastor Kevin, and that bothered me.

Not accepting his pamphlet nagged at me, by rejecting his literature was I also rejecting hm? It troubled me to the point that I spent the rest of the morning thinking about it and most of that day looking in the shelters we hiked past hoping that he had left something in one of them with contact information so I could connect with him and explain my position. There was no trace of him anywhere on the trail and none of the other hikers we encountered mentioned seeing him, he had vanished as miraculously as he had appeared.   It’s said that evil is the lack of empathy and while the traveler I encountered in the evening wasn’t menacing (except for his eyes) he also wasn’t friendly or warm.

By evening we had hiked a few miles out of the gap to a shelter where we would spend the night, I had all but forgotten about Pastor Kevin. There were three other hikers we knew already there, Agony, U-Turn, and Walrus (trail names), and my son and I set about pitching our tents and inventorying our gear for the evening and the next day’s hike. As twilight approached, the other campers were congregated around the picnic table in front of the shelter chatting some twenty feet away and I was sitting at my tent, it was then he came walking down the path at a brisk pace into our campsite and directly to me. Crouching as he stopped just inches from where I sat, he looked to be in his 50s, thin, fit, and well groomed, with dark hair and distinguished greying temples. When I looked up into his eyes, I immediately froze with fear, there was something about them that made my heart stop. There’s an eye disorder known as aniridia which makes the eyes appear to have no iris.  In truth, there is a small ring of iris, but it is so small, and the pupil is so large that it looks like the eyes are completely black with little sclera (white) around them, this described his appearance. At the time, I had never heard of such a disorder, and I’m not even certain he had this condition.

Up to this point in the story, you may think me dramatic or exaggerating for saying this, but something deep inside of me was terrified and considered if only for a moment, that I was looking into the face of the Devil. Later, when I learned about aniridia and updated my schema (conceptual framework) my view changed, which brings me to my point. This thing we call “living,” executing life, experiencing the world, and going about our day is not a completely rational, logical endeavor, it’s not an exact science. It’s fraught with irrationality, intuition, and emotion, its complex and for that reason often has more gaps and unanswered questions in the picture than answered ones. Our minds attempt to answer these questions the best it can, filling in the picture but that doesn’t necessarily make it better, or accurate. The left hemisphere of our brain craves immediate answers and closure, looks at things in decontextualized terms and is obsessed with simple models and explanations. It will always try to sell you a packaged solution neatly tied up in a bow no matter how contrived, implausible, or “conspiracy-theory-ish” it is. Don’t give in to its rationale, it’s fabricated, and while it may fill the gap it’s not the whole picture or real life though it can look real, feel comforting, and sound convincing.  So how do we navigate with such an imaginative (and sometimes fearful) mind with poise, grace, and clarity?  Leave room for what, and what ifs.

And what happened with my encounter with the ominous stranger? As he crouched in front of me, he asked how much further it was to Devil Fork Gap, boring holes into me with his black unblinking eyes.  I croaked out it was about three miles further, and then quickly followed with “are you thinking of staying here tonight?” praying the answer would be no. “No,” he said, I tried not to register audible relief. “At Devil Fork Gap I’m picking up a trail that’s not marked on the map” he said, “and from there I’m taking another trail only I know about” and he smiled a big, open-mouthed smile. As he got up to walk away curiosity suddenly overtook my fear and I asked, “do you have a trail name?”  He turned, walked half the distance between us back to me and, considering me for a moment with an expressionless face, said “no, I don’t.”  After he left and was out of earshot, I asked the others who’d been listening to our conversation if they noticed his eyes, no one had. I slept more soundly that night knowing our traveler had moved on.

Fear

Perceived good and bad happens every day giving us intuitive pinches about their origins and meaning, causing gut reactions, and prompting reflection about what could be happening behind the veil, underneath.  I got a pinch on the trail that Friday which in the moment sent shivers up my spine and still has me wondering.  Often, in the business world we don’t get definitive answers about the strange goings-on around us and so we never get resolution unless we either let those things go or fill in the gaps with what we think happened. We may even dwell on them until they affect us adversely or we make incorrect decisions about them, taking actions on guesses when we really don’t know what happened in the first place. The problem with gap filling is just that, its filling, and may not contain any usable valid substance.

Worse, we can’t “hike away” from unresolved issues, troublesome people, or situations when it comes to co-workers, bosses, or repeating processes. What’s the answer for persistence at work that doesn’t make sense? Perhaps it’s to accept it as it is in the moment and (safety aside) don’t make assumptions, judgements, or decisions unless it’s to decide to suspend judgement, not deciding, until you learn more. Reserve an open space for what might “shake-out” down the road and don’t decide or act until you must, no matter how annoying, uncomfortable, or unsettling that feels. As if validation of this strategy just last week at a family gathering a relative offered an alternate explanation of my traveler after I told my story. They said some people hiked backcountry wilderness in search of psychedelic mushrooms (psilocybin). These hallucinogens can dilate the pupils, changing one’s appearance, and alter the mind, changing one’s behavior. The mention of going “off-trail” may explain the hikers’ pursuit of secluded locations (for hunting mushrooms?). It’s a possibility I didn’t consider; my schema was updated again.