Trails of Life

I am grateful to have the opportunity to be able work with such awesome people on incredible community building projects with M E Clarke Consulting. Life takes us on a journey of various trails throughout life, sometimes those trails are through meadows, sometimes up steep ridges and other times free flowing downhill toward a stream. It’s not often about the terrain we climb, but the people and the experiences we encounter along the way.

I have been blessed to be able to hike in some of the most beautiful places on earth. I completed the W trail in Patagonia, the Salkantay trek in Peru, summited Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, various hikes around glaciers and volcanoes in Iceland, completed the ‘rim to rim’ at the Grand Canyon, hikes on the Pacific Crest and Appalachian Trail, Summited Mt. Mitchell in North Carolina, Katahdin in Maine, and various day hikes and trails in national and state parks throughout the US. To me, life is about challenges – what’s the next summit?

Currently the next summit for me is becoming a father and embarking on a new journey in coaching and team development. I find that the physical challenges of hiking are the icing or sprinkles on our lives. Our emotional worlds can be much less predictable and are often not as beautiful. On a trail you can slow down to take in the beauty, take a rest. Our day to day lives could use this same flow…to slow down, to take in the beauty, take a rest. As a trail gets steep and air gets thinner, we give ourselves grace to take a deep inhale and just put one foot in front of the other. Perhaps we could do this in other aspects of life. It can be hard to take the time to reflect when we are spending so much energy focused on getting to the next milestone. An easy look over our shoulder can show us how far we have come.

I am currently at Mt. Fatherhood basecamp while gathering my gear for my journey starting in consulting. It’s a group hike that will have its challenges, but I’m looking forward to this trail!