By: Rad Watkins

As you hike in a wilderness area you wind around this bend and that. You zigzag up switch backs, and maybe even traverse talus slopes. The real decisive point in your whole journey comes when you hit the split in the trail and the signs point to two different destinations. How do you know where to go?

Well, if you were at all prepared for your trip, you brought a map, or at least looked at a map and planned your route. That’s what you do when you go hiking. If you’re in big wilderness country and you have not planned a route, then your decision at that simple split in the road may be the difference as to what state you wind up in. It can be the difference to whether or not you get water that day. It could be the difference between sleeping on an exposed snowfield or in a nice sheltered forest. In big wilderness you NEED a map.

Do You Have a Map? You Need One!

I don’t think I am saying anything shocking here, but ironically, as we move through our lives, we rarely have things mapped out. We wind through this challenge and that. We zigzag between career and home-life. We traverse financial obstacles, but we really don’t have any sort of map. And let me tell you something, we are in BIG wilderness!

Isn’t it funny that on a little recreational escape we will plan meals, make sure our pack has everything we could need, and even carry things for emergencies, yet… in daily life, we just sort of head off. In the book Animal Leadership: Leadership Learned from Wildlife for Leading Yourself and Others, I describe the four animal personalities. The Eagle is the one with the most planned out vision, whereas the Wolf is probably the most spontaneous and carefree in daily actions (if you want to see what you are take the FREE test at www.AnimalLeadership.com). Maybe some Eagle-people do have a plan for their lives, although I doubt many, and almost certainly most Wolf-people do not. Do you?

Map Your Plan, Prioritize

As a natural resource professional, I have studied plenty of plans. For a couple of years, working as a Senior Scientist for a consulting company, all I really did was write strategic plans for citizen groups who were looking to manage local resources. The concepts applied basically boil down to knowing your priorities, identifying your resources, and deciding what actions you will take. This is the map to negotiate the wilderness. Yet, how many of us lay that out for our own lives?

Mapping out your priorities can be one of the most important things we do. Steven Covey, the designer of the famous Franklin Covey Planner, talks about sharpening the axe before you begin to chop the tree. It is defining our priorities that he refers to. It is mapping our course which makes the difference in what we are really capable of achieving. Everyone has the same 24 hours in a day, yet some people never have time while others accomplish great things. Some can have a blast spending time in the wilderness, while others just feel lost.

There are many great tools for designing your map. I’ll talk more about that in next week’s blog. For now, I want you to ponder the idea of even having a map. Do you? Do you know where you’re going, or even where you’re hoping to wind up? Let’s build a map together. Let’s become determined to achieve some direction so we can enjoy our travels through this beautiful wilderness. Let me know what tools you come up with to build your map. There is nothing like looking out from a mountain top to a vast sea of wild, especially if you decisively and determinedly got there, and know how to get down.

Keep mapping,
Rad