How The Hell Did I Get Here???

How One Day at Outward Bound in Eskdale, England Changed My Life!

1.

"How The Hell Did I Get Here"?

It is 6:00 AM on January 29, 1967 and someone is blowing a whistle and flicking the lights on /

off/ on / off, / on /off. I am in a bunk room with nine other people and we have to get

out of a warm bed. The worst part is we have to put on shorts, run down a hill into a shower

room and pull the chain to stand under a cold shower. Then run back up the hill, dry off, get

dressed, straighten our bunkroom and go to a cold breakfast.

I am twenty nine years old and the next oldest other person in my patrol group, of ten, is

nineteen. I am the father of two young girls, I am married, I am over weight, I am out of shape

and I am an executive of a large corporation. How in the hell did I get here keeps going through

my mind. The fact that I not only agreed to attend Outward Bound for twenty six days in the

dead of winter in Eskdale England is only made worst, by the fact that I had demanded to come.

How could I be so dumb?

I was working in my office in Greensboro, North Carolina in September 1966 when my boss

asked me to come to the conference room for a meeting. When I got there, he and the President

of the company were in the room with a fellow who looked like he spent a lot of time outdoors.

We want you to see a movie, they said. This was not unusual since we used a lot of resources in

developing the Management Development Program I was creating for the company.

2.

The movie started with beautiful pictures of the Colorado Mountains. Then it switched to ten

teenage boys running down a hill at dawn into a cold shower, then back up the hill to get dressed.

They proceeded as the movie progressed to climb mountains, climb cliffs, hike with full packs,

camp in the wilderness and run six miles cross country. When the movie ended, I thought this

was interesting, but what did it have to do with my Management Development Program? The

President introduced me to the outdoor type, in the room, as the Director of the North Carolina,

Outward Bound School. The school was located at Table Rock Mountain above Hickory, North

Carolina. The Director started talking about how the program was being used by British

Companies, to train their Manager Trainees. I begin to see the purpose of this meeting. He

explained that Outward Bound was a program developed in 1940 for the British Merchant

Marines. When ships bringing war supplies to Britain were sunk by German U boats the older

sailors survived in greater numbers that the younger sailors. A study that was done, clearly

showed that the more experienced sailors survived because of tough experiences learned over