We are Family Nature Summits.
According to our mission statement…We are a non-profit organization “devoted to environmental education and appreciation of nature, history and culture through a week of adventure for all ages and backgrounds”.
Every newsletter that we send out to our members has an article in it about “Nature”… but what about the “Family”? Family is right there – first word in our name. Why is that?
20 years ago, based on the small ad in Ranger Rick magazine, our love of nature and outdoors – we were drawn by curiosity to come to our very first Summit, in West Virginia. We loved everything about our time there. But it was the Family of people that we met that very first year that kept us coming back every single year since then….for the last 20+ years.
There is something very unique and very special about people who attend the Summits. Something that cannot be readily communicated via newsletter or web site, but can be easily felt after hiking, biking, kayaking, rock climbing and horseback riding with the same people for a week. Once a year. We come from every corner of this nation, we are of different generations, genders, races and orientations, and we deeply love and care for each other. And yes we are, indeed, a Family.
Relationships that I formed back in West Virginia 2 decades ago are stronger than ever today. There is a very good reason for that. Allow me to elaborate here. Since I am allowed to blow my own anonymity, it won’t be a shocking announcement to anyone that I am an alcoholic and an addict. In recovery for over 21 years. So we are all good here.
I arrived in West Virginia with my wife and my two young children and barely a year of hard earned sobriety under my belt. It was my first real outing around “normal” people.
And I was not comfortable! Not at all!
After securing permission, I attached a simple piece of paper outside our dining hall with a triangle inside a circle.
It is an international symbol of AA. Simple.
I added a plain but heartfelt plea to the bottom of my flyer…. “Any friend of Bill W. please knock on the door or call Room 42.”
In under one hour there was a knock on my door.
Longtime Summiteer Lloyd Otte was standing outside my door – extending his hand and grinning ear to ear. He identified himself as a long-term member of Alcoholics Anonymous and indicated that all I had to do was knock on my wall…. As he was staying in Room 41. You can’t make up stuff like this folks. My world shifted that day. Lloyd and I spent quite a bit of time talking to each other and we bonded closer than any family. I had NO problems after that first Summit, as Lloyd was always there. Among many others. I never felt out of place at the Summit ever again. I found my Family within the FNS family.
Like family members – we support each other. We protect each other. We look out for one another.
When the Kussmauls went missing at the Ghost Ranch – we had multiple parties out, forgoing meals and fanning out in scorching heat – scouting adjacent hills and valleys until we located them and brought them home. Safe, if hungry.
When fellow hiker Marilyn had difficulty hiking back from one of our extended vertical treks with an ankle that was giving her trouble – I volunteered as the “sweeper” and stayed with her for a long, long trek downhill. Unlike hikers Carol and Kay, she refused my many offers of a piggyback ride down the mountain, but we arrived safely. Late for dinner we were, but bonded forever. She is an experienced hiker now who posts her hiking adventures from across the nation.
There are numerous experiences like that. This article is simply too short to list all the different ways we support each other before, during, and after Summits. For me, I’ve travelled to a different state on a motorcycle to deliver a Birthday poem that I wrote for Sue Sabo. The Steussys had breakfast with us while biking across the United States. My wife and I just went to visit Dave Egan in his newly built house in RI this weekend. Arthur and Marla Krasinsky received unexpected guests from CT at their house in New Jersey for a very special birthday….the examples are endless, and there will be more. Not just my stories either; they will be your own.
We are one big family.
Everyone who joins us with a yellow scarf ends up coming back.
And I am not surprised.
Family is not just our DNA, family is where we feel that we belong.
Right here.
At the Family Nature Summits.