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Copyright 2002 Carrying Council in the Wilderness Introduction Corporate and business teams seem to spend a lot of time in meetings. While wilderness teams also have good reasons to meet, it is worth exploring alternative methods of sharing information and coordinating group activities, for several reasons. First, the technologies of modern meetings are unavailable in the wilderness. There are no overhead projectors or flip charts; indeed, team members may be limited to a small notebook, which is wet, and a ballpoint pen, which has stopped working. Printed agendas are unlikely to be distributed ahead of time. Second, a wilderness team spends more time in closer quarters with each other than a corporate or business team, and discussions of personal interactions therefore are more frequent and more intense. Third, the subjects a wilderness team discusses are sometimes more intimate than those of a business or corporate team. Few business teams need to discuss the proper disposal of their used toilet paper. An alternative meeting format is often called, simply, council, or sometimes wisdom circle, or just circle. There have been surprisingly few books on council (Zimmerman & Coyle, 1996; Baldwin, 1998; Garfield, Spring, & Cahill, 1998). A number of organizations and individuals purport to teach council, and even more purport to practice it; but I think it is fair to say that the seminal teacher of council is the Ojai Foundation, located in Ojai, California, which has recently established a separate body called the Center for Council Training to provide ongoing council training, in-service and retreat-based internships, and a comprehensive program of related courses. Three names stand out as the most significant elders in the council movement – Joan Halifax, Virginia Coyle, and Jack Zimmerman, who first met at Ojai and together worked out what they called the way of council. As carriers of council, they taught seminars and workshops not only at Ojai but wherever they could get a hearing. Through their teaching at the School of Lost Borders in Big Pine, California, the practice of council became inextricably woven into the practice of the wilderness vision quest, as taught to generations of wilderness leaders by Steven Foster and Meredith Little; and, through such organizations as the Wilderness Guides Council, the practice of council became an important part of many transformative wilderness programs. The idea of council is very simple, and can be described in a few sentences. In council, people sit in a circle, and pass around what is called a talking stick. Whoever holds the talking stick talks, and everybody else listens. There are no interruptions, no questions, no challenges, no comments. People speak one at a time, in turn, honestly from their hearts, and listen devoutly from their hearts to each person who speaks. The effect can be miraculous. Council seems to flourish in the wilderness. One is tempted to see in council a primordial form of human interaction and decisionmaking that is deeply appropriate for the wilderness setting. A small band in the wilderness is interdependent, with few outside resources. Individuals need the group in order to survive, just as the group needs all the skills of its members in order to survive. When decisions are to be made, it is necessary to listen respectfully to the experience of all the members. When there are disputes or conflicts or misbehavior, there has to be less concern with retributive justice – revenge, punishment, control, determining who is right – than with the maintenance of healthy relationships within the group. The practice of council can be an essential component of building team cohesion and mutual respect in the wilderness. < Previous Next > | ||
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