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Join Derek Hudson as he explores Essential Dynamics, a framework for approaching the challenges facing people and organizations. Consider your Quest!
Welcome to Essential Dynamics. I'm Derek Hudson. I'm the host of the Essential Dynamics podcast and the creator of Essential Dynamics, a framework that we use to figure out how to work together in organizations, how to get hard things done, and how to deal with the challenges of life. Normally, on Essential Dynamics podcast, we have deep conversations with interesting people. But today, I'm trying something new.
Derek:This is a solo effort. I'm I don't have a guest. So we could consider this deep reflections from a person who's interested in challenges of life. What I wanna talk about is, how we can learn and understand these principles through the activities of life outside of work. So last week I gotta set this up right.
Derek:So last week, I went on a backpacking trip in the Canadian Rockies. It's one of my it's one of my favorite things to do, and I look forward to to a trip for for months at a time, making sure that we have we have a a good route planned and a gear ready and the right right people to to go on the adventure with us. And so a lot of ways, backpacking is is a great metaphor for the challenges of life. It really evokes the idea of a quest, and it all kinds of comes all the parts of essential dynamics really come together when you're thinking about a backpacking trip. And so that's what I wanna talk about today, and this is all stuff that's coming out of my head based on my experience.
Derek:So I thought I'd try to, do it on my own here. So if I if I wanna take you back to essential dynamics, the idea of essential dynamics is that, life is hard for good reasons, and we do better when we recognize that life is hard and that and that it requires something of us. And so as we look at that, we come to the idea of a quest. Now the epic quest of fantasy, seems kinda remote to us. The idea that, you might be called from the village to go, go on a journey to, to fight a dragon or that you might find out that you're actually descended from mythical science fiction fantasy Jedi knights or that despite the fact that you live under the stairs in your mean uncle and aunt's house, you're actually a wizard.
Derek:So all those things have some fantastical elements or some science fiction elements or mythological elements in them. And so perhaps we don't kinda put ourselves in a position of really understanding that we are involved in a quest in our own lives. So I find backpacking is is a great it's a great way. It's it's like reduces everything to its ultimate essence. Why is that?
Derek:Well, I would just tell you a little bit about my trip. So I live in Edmonton, which is, about 400 kilometers from the Canadian Rockies no matter if you go south, southwest, or west. It just takes about four hours to get to the Rockies, which sounds like a long distance. But in Alberta, we do things in long distances, and there's not actually all that much in between us and the Rockies. So off we go and before we know it, we're there.
Derek:So I've had the opportunity to to backpack up and down the Canadian Rockies along the Alberta BC border from Waterton in the south by the US border up to the Jasper, which is straight west of Edmonton. My first backpacking trip was actually when I was a boy scout in 1973, and we hiked the the Fryatt Valley in Jasper National Park. And from, I don't know, maybe five minutes in, I was hooked. I knew that I was do doing something that that I loved. And so more than fifty years later, I'm I'm still able to do that.
Derek:Very very very happy that that my health and circumstance have allowed me to to continue to get into the backcountry. So this particular trip was one that I've been trying to get on for a number of years. It's about 40 kilometers in length and involves, over 4,000 meters of, elevation gain that actually starts starts and ends in, different points along the highway that are relatively similar in elevation. So that 4,000 meters up is also accompanied by about 4,000 meters down over the four days. We we crossed four major, Alpine passes, and hiked from, near Saskatchewan River Crossing, which is near the Banff Jasper border, north to to a place called the Sunset Sunset Pass.
Derek:We camped at Michelle Lakes and Pinto Lake. And we were able to camp above treeline, hike above treeline, and have all kinds of adventures. So why is this a big deal? Why is backpacking a big deal? Why is it a big deal to me?
Derek:Well, first of all, I really feel connected to the most important things when I'm in nature. And, the wilder and remoter and more challenging that nature is, like, the greater I feel that connection. And for listeners of podcasts, you know that from time to time, we talk about things in more of a more of a spiritual dimension. And I have to say that I feel close to my creator when I am in some of his most epic creations. So I I very much like getting away from from the busyness of the city, getting into some of the most beautiful country in the world.
Derek:So that's one thing. The other thing is that the combination of that with the effort that it takes to get there makes those valued experiences more worthwhile. If it's hard to get to a beautiful place, you appreciate the beautiful place, maybe perhaps a little bit better. And another thing is that there's this extreme amount of self reliance that you need to have on a backpacking trip. You head out and literally everything that you're taking with you is in your backpack on your back.
Derek:There's a dynamic tension to backpacking. You want to be able to have all the stuff that you need, but everything you put in your pack weighs something. And if your pack's too heavy, then you either can't accomplish the journey that you set out or it becomes, far more difficult. So there's an always an optimization problem, which I've been enthralled with for years for how do I reduce the weight of my pack and increase my my comfort, my safety, and my ability to, to get the job done? So you put all that together, it's pretty compelling for me.
Derek:But I do wanna relate this more specifically and directly to essential dynamics in kind of a step by step way. So if we think about it, first thing in essential dynamics we talk about is that there's there's a quest. And and the nature of a quest is that it's hard, is that we are trying to accomplish something that's not easy to do, but that's for some reason, is is worthwhile. And so what like, what would be so we talk about purpose. And what would be the purpose for a backpacking trip?
Derek:Well, I've already said that I really like getting into the wild places, into the into the high places, into some of God's greatest creations. So I like so so that could be a purpose. Purpose is I wanna go to a place that I haven't been before or or a place that I've been to and that I that I wanna go back to because of what's there and and what I can see. There's also the sense of adventure that comes from that. So I'm gonna go to a beautiful place, but it's gonna be hard to get there.
Derek:And so that sense of adventure and challenge certainly comes up. And then there's also the the real sense of camaraderie that I have that I've had from the groups of people that I've been with. The back country, it I think, in a lot of ways, brings out the real person, the best of the person.
Derek:Certainly, there's a bit of a filter that, when we're undertaking those kinds of activities, there's a certain, strength of personality that, just needs to be there kinda naturally. And so find that our interests, align and we work together well. For purposes of this trip, let's say that that I had a purpose x and a purpose y.
Derek:We talked about that. And so purpose x in in some sense for me was that, if I completed this particular trail, I will have hiked all of Section E of the Great Divide Trail, and that's the part between Saskatchewan Crossing and Jasper. And to be totally technical, I've, I I now have hiked all of Section E except for the highway parts where there, where there isn't a trail, and I might catch those, in the future just to say I could I did that too. So there was a there was a pretty good place, particular section of the map that I wanted to cover. When you head out, like, in this case, we, before we started our hike, we shuttled cars to the other end of the hike.
Derek:So there there's a pretty pretty clear purpose. So we're gonna leave Point A, and, four days from now, we're gonna arrive at Point B. And that's that's the purpose and, is to get Point B. Now, of course, there's that's purpose access, you know, make step forward. Eventually, you get your the 40 kilometers and the 4,000 meters of elevation out of the way and you're at your destination.
Derek:But, of course, we know it's also about the journey. And so the purpose why could be, well, we're gonna have we're gonna have fun. We're gonna do things that we enjoy doing. We're gonna see alpine meadows, cliffs, and waterfalls, and mountain lakes. I wanna talk about that purpose x for a second, but I I do wanna move forward to the purpose y conversation.
Derek:But for purpose x, just just one thing that I want to the story in our in our family I want to highlight. A lot of times when you go for a walk, you, you come back to where you start. And, if you, decide you're not having a good time or you have, trouble with, with your body or equipment or the weather, then you turn around and come back, and it's it's a very wise thing to do. And I've done it and I've done it I've done it so many times that I can continue to sit here and tell stories about it because I've never I've never been in a situation where I should have done it, and I didn't turn around. But in a in a point to point one where you you arrive at a different destination, there's there's other considerations.
Derek:Probably that was most poignant in our family just over twenty years ago when my friend and I took our daughters and friends on the Juan De Fuca Trail on Vancouver Island. And we started Monday afternoon, and our destination was about 50 kilometers away. We were supposed to arrive there on Friday. So the the moms dropped us off, and off we went with five 14 to 16 year old girls. My daughter would have been the smallest of of all those kids, my daughter Jade.
Derek:And she's 14 years old, might have weighed eighty pounds. She just hiked like a trooper. She was just amazing the the whole the whole trip. And at one point, I asked her, said, "Jade, like, you didn't complain. You just you just kept walking. Was it that made that made you so so tough and and so capable?"
Derek:And she said, "Well, you know, at the trailhead, when I when I watched, mom drive away, I thought, if I am ever going to see her again, I have to get the other end of the trail by Friday at lunch." It was a very, very, very clear purpose that she had. And so that's in this case, that's our purpose x. We're gonna go from a to b.
Derek:Purpose y then is we're gonna have fun along the way. There's some experiences that we wanna have. And I'd I'd like I think this is a good place to introduce the idea of the fun scale, which I'll I'll link to in the show notes because there's an interesting story because the the person who invented the fun scale wasn't didn't make that, that big a deal about it, and it kind of got, it kinda got legs on its own. But it was doctor Rayner Newberry from, University of Alaska, who's a geologist. And, of course, they're out and about doing hard things.
Derek:So Type 1 Fun is fun that's fun while it's fun. Like, you do it, and it's fun, and you know you're having fun. You know, I think of, I think playing playing basketball, water skiing, those kinds of things are just fun.
Derek:Type 2 Fun is, maybe not so much fun while you're doing it. But after the fact, it's fulfilling. It brings great satisfaction, and you wanna do it again. And so a lot of parts of a backpacking trip that are type two fun. And I think I think that's it's a very important important for us to understand why Type 2 Fun is important for us because it fits this idea of a quest and opposition. Type 2 Fun has to be hard. Type 1 Fun is is just enjoyable all the time.
Derek:Type 2 Fun has elements of of challenge and discomfort in it that that are really significant.
Derek:And in the moment, we might say, I I, you know, I want to stop. Why are we doing this? This is the dumbest thing ever. I'm gonna diverge for a second here and illustrate the idea of type two fun by reading the account of an experience that I had in, in 2008.
Derek:And the reason I'm gonna read it is because I spent a lot of time thinking thinking, through this little concept, and I think the writing's useful, and I don't wanna, don't wanna over summarize it. So this, this is a journal entry dated 07/14/2008. I spent last week at the LDS scout venture camp based in Kootenay Plains, Alberta. I had a great opportunity to act as a guide on the Bow Glacier activity, which meant hiking up to Bow Hut on the edge of the Bow Glacier and guiding groups of 16 to eight year olds onto the glacier. Here's an experience I had which illustrates why scouting is so great.
Derek:The hike to Bow Hut is pretty strenuous and takes three to six hours depending on the group. The last boy to arrive with one of the groups was about an hour behind the main group. He arrived exhausted and almost sick. He wasn't in very good shape and had two painful ingrown toenails to deal with, along with a huge pack. His leaders fed him and put him to bed.
Derek:There wasn't really any discussion about actually getting him up on the glacier the next day. We were just concerned about getting him down again. He slept in the next morning, getting up in time for lunch and packing up for the hike down, which began in a snowstorm. Again, this fellow ended up trailing the main group. By the end of the hike, he was fading fast.
Derek:He said, at one point, "I think I only have three minutes of battery life left!", but an astute leader got him talking about his favorite thing, comic book superheroes, and he made it to the end of the trail.
Derek:We walked in the parking lot in a blinding snowstorm just as the bus arrived to take the boys back to the main camp. I sat next to this young man on a bus ride back to camp. He was cold, wet, and exhausted. Almost all his waking hours on this whole trip were spent head down, putting one sore foot in front of the other. He didn't make it onto the glacier. He really didn't have a chance to bond with the other boys, being so far behind them on the trail, and I'm pretty sure he wasn't able to stop and appreciate the incredible scenery. Overall, maybe not a great time.
Derek:However, on the bus, this young man told me, "This hike was the best experience of my life."
Derek:That's the power of scouting and what Baden Powell was after when he said "The open air is the real objective of scouting and a key to its success. We are not a club nor a Sunday school, but school of the woods. You must get more into the open for the health, whether of the body or the soul of scout and scoutmaster".
Derek:Wow. That kinda got me again.
Derek:"That was the best experience of my life." That's Type 2 Fun. I didn't know what type two fun was when I wrote that, but that's definitely type two fun. So here's a here's a purpose. Here's the wrap up on Purpose then. Purpose X: to get from A to B. Purpose Y: to have epic Type 2 Fun.
Derek:Now let's let's talk a little bit about the Path. Of course, the path in a backpacking trip is nonmetaphorical. The path is real.
Derek:It's it's there. It's in front of you. It winds up and down over, different kinds of terrain. It's easy to lose the path. That happened to us a number of times on this trip.
Derek:And when we talk about the path and essential dynamics, the opposing forces that we talk about are the dynamic tension that we talk about is drivers and constraints. And a lot of times when I talk about path, I I go to physical examples and have drivers and constraints. And one of them, it's apt for skiing and sailing and surfing and things like that. It's just this idea of direct of gravity and friction. If you stand at the top of a mountain on a pair of skis, the the way way you get the driver for getting down to the bottom of the mountain is just gravity.
Derek:It's the attraction of the the center of mass at the center of the earth at 9.8 meters per second squared that, it's pulling you down. And And what's keeping you doing that in an instant is, the fact that you have edges on your skis. You have some control over that, and you can apply, friction to allow you to turn and brake. And there's that constant tension between gravity and friction, sets the course for, all kinds of things in life. However, on a backpacking trip, gravity is typically not your friend.
Derek:So there's your when you're climbing, as in when you're, climbing you're walking up a trail that has some elevation gain to it when you're when you're climbing like that. Every step, you've gotta lift your body weight and your pack weight up against gravity and then try and get it to a new point and take another step. So what's the driver? Well, I've hiked, I've hiked with a lot of youth over the years, and there's really just a couple kinds of drivers that you see. And for a backpacking trip or many other human endeavor, it's it's our internal will.
Derek:It's, it's what we want out of the situation. And I've seen it in, in many different ways. I've seen young people who have no drive. They're not on that hike because they want to be. They don't want to get to the other side.
Derek:They do not want to enjoy the experience along the way. There's some kind of external force, a leader or a group expectation that, you know, they they have to keep up or they're gonna get left behind. Maybe it's fear. Maybe it's, social pressure. That driver doesn't work very well.
Derek:It doesn't work very well on a hike, and it doesn't work very well in life. I I've also seen young people being able to tap into a driver that they didn't know that they had. I remember an experience years ago as a very, very young, scout leader. I had a bunch of boys. We climbed the shoulder of a mountain.
Derek:We got a fantastic view. It starts raining, and we think about the path that we need to take to get back to our tents, which we can see below us. And it looks like there's this green carpet of vegetation between us high on this peak and our tents way down below in the valley. And we should have retraced our steps through a windy path, down into a bowl and then and then down a steep steep mountain headwall to the camp. That's what we should have done.
Derek:But this carpet looks so inviting that we started into it only to realize that that carpet was spruce bushes that were six to 10 feet - above the heads of these 12 and 13 year old boys. And it was raining, and we were just fighting through the brush, making our way slowly down. We got to the point where we had most of the boys in tears or almost in tears because they're so uncomfortable and a little bit scared. And I was worried for them. Like, you can get hypothermia.
Derek:It we couldn't just hike it off because we had to get through this brush. We knew where to go, but it wasn't easy. And in this situation, one of the young boys and my brother who was an even younger coleader of mine discovered that there was this spruce tree that was very specifically placed on the top of little rock And it's functioned like a pole vault. And if you pulled it back hard and then took a couple of running steps, it would fling you forward several feet off this rock outcropping and your fall would be cushioned by these spruce bushes that had been our nemesis to this point. When they discovered that, the boys all lined up and one by one, they launched themselves off this off this spruce pole vault and into the bush and laughed and giggled.
Derek:And their spirits worked up so much that as they made their way into camp, they were soaking wet, laughing, and then in a hysterically fine mood because of the fun that they're having. What did I learn from that? Well, I I'd learned that there's more. There's more down deep down in even a 12 year old that can function as a driver if the conditions are right.
Derek:Well, this is this has been a fun conversation, I guess. Kind of a one way conversation, which is unusual for me, but there's lots in my head about this. And as I see the time winding down for this episode, we've, we've covered the quest. We've talked about the purpose, talked about the path. There's, still more to go. In our next episode, we're gonna talk about people, and we're gonna talk about flow.
Derek:And, I hope that through these conversations, these some of these principles of essential dynamics become more real, more tangible, and, more useful in work in organizations and in society. Or perhaps maybe, you're now pulling out the Canadian Rockies trail guide, flipping through it, finding a hike, and, and getting yourself back back in the backcountry or in the backcountry the first time to design your own quest. And so as we wind up and move to the next episode, maybe maybe for real this time after so many episodes, you're you're gonna be taking some time to consider your quest.