Last Friday, I was at the McLaren Technology Centre, toiling through the final few hours of what had been a grueling week of confirming monthly actuals and building a considered 4+8 forecast. Managing my team through these moments, where we hold up our achievements and predictions for the business to challenge or accept, can make even the most experienced feel slightly exposed. That imposter syndrome that creeps into most of us early in our careers never fully leaves, even after decades of walking through the fires.
But regardless of the work, that clock on the wrist keeps ticking and 5:30 pm arrives. In the carpark sat my van, “Rick.” Pre-packed on Thursday, it contained all that was needed for a weekend in the woods. So, clocking off from one job, I jumped straight into another as a Scout Leader.
I drove to Bentley Copse with no time to decompress. I forced my mind, heavy with the day's logistics, to utilise that journey to partition away what would be needed on Monday, leaving only the plans and schedules required for the 17 youngsters waiting for me. This was a training weekend on navigation skills - a commitment to a new influx of younger Scouts who would hopefully become skilled enough with map and compass to partake in the expedition required to earn Gold Scout status in the future.
They waited in the carpark of the woodland campsite, excitement evident on their faces when the orange flash of “Rick” turned in with me at the wheel. Parents smiled at me too and I returned the gesture, but I was already exhausted.
"No good deed goes unpunished," echoed in my head from the musical Wicked. The relentless responsibility of keeping a dozen young lives safe, fed, and warm gave weight to this clever phrase.
The Friction of the Field
Volunteering is a beautiful concept on paper. In truth, it is a heavy burden on time that generates natural friction with the rest of our existence.
Every hour spent teaching a young Scout how to correctly drive a tent peg or map a circular loop to Pitch Hill and back is an hour carved away from somewhere or someone else. It is time stolen from family, from friends, from personal rest and from training goals. It is also not particularly compatible with the exhausting, late-night hustle of building a side business like Bones & the Bull.
And the job is never just one thing. I had three other leaders with me and the theme of the camp was navigation: the technical grit of reading contours and compass bearings, seeing a route pop into life on paper, teaching them to visualize a journey to breed familiarity before even setting foot on the trail. There are swathes of adults who have never gained this skill. We were keeping its teaching alive, but the reality of leadership demands far more:
- The Mechanics: Teaching basic survival, from knotting lines to lighting damp wood.
- The Sustenance: Trangia cooking, managing camp kitchens, and ensuring proper nutrition out in the elements (as well as S'mores mastery by the fire at night).
- The Mental Game: Monitoring the invisible landscape of a young person's happiness, homesickness and emotional well-being, while also decoding the dynamics between them to allow for a covert policing of civility.
It is exhausting (especially for an introvert) and can test patience to the absolute limit.
The Antidote to the Glowing Rectangle
So why volunteer to be punished by the clock?
We all have the right to do what we do for our own reasons. For me, I volunteer because the younger generation is starving for what the woods provide. My own “anti-role models” of inept men bumbling through my childhood gave me the need to do better than they did. I see how we now live in an era dominated by glowing screens that offer instant gratification, simulated adventure and a total escape from discomfort. I also recognise that pixels do not build resilience.
An algorithm cannot teach a child how to stand on top of a wind-swept hill, look at a map and realize they have the power to find their own way home. It cannot give them the calm centre required to sit under the canopy and pull together a “Banging Bacon Bagel.”
To build grit, we must experience the elements. To get cold, get lost and get tired, yet still figure it all out, is how kids truly learn (and adults do, too). To give them the stage upon which to do this with a true sense of independence - balanced with the safety net of calm guardians who clear the path so they can learn to walk it - is doing them (and us) a service.
A Slower, Deeper Currency
The payout of this work doesn't arrive in a bank account. It certainly doesn't show up in the ledger of spare time either, but it seeps into our chest to reinforce layers of our own worth.
The exhaustion of the weekend gave way to something timeless. Sitting around the fire, the trials of the day's hike faded. The woods came alive. Above, a clear sky flushed with stars. Below, the heavy, low rustle of badgers barrelling through bushes. In the air, the unmistakable “twit-twoo” of screech owls chattering across the night to locate one another amongst the treetops.
This sensory engagement was soul-feeding. Looking across the embers, seeing young faces totally detached from the digital world and awash with genuine smiles, the true pay cheque landed home. The currency: a quiet satisfaction, grounding me back into what matters.
One day (hopefully far from now), I will be ash. The watch on my wrist will no longer matter as my time will be completely spent, but I hope that somewhere down the line, ahead of where I shuffled off the mortal coil, a grown adult - once a young Scout - will look at a generation coming up behind them and choose to give up a weekend. I have faith that they will spend some of their valuable time on the new youth, teaching old skills, because someone once took the time to spend it on them.
So, volunteering can be a punishment. Experience comes at a personal cost, but for this one, the legacy is worth the payment.
Bones
1 comment
Thos bagels were definitely Bangin!