How Do You Rate a Sunrise?By Tom Masloski You're back at the trailhead, exhausted and exhilarated; you're happy to be back in civilization yet sad to be leaving the wilderness; you feel a lightness of being walking without a backpack, still, you kind of miss the reassuring heft of the pack. All your "Why do I do this to myself?" questions have been answered to your absolute approval. You've been complacent about wearing the same underwear for - you've lost track of however long it's been - but now you can't wait for a hot shower and clean skivvies. And then . oh, damn . and then you have to fill out that survey. What a downer!! It's been a great trip; despite some rough patches, most of the kids did really well. This is a time for camaraderie, not finger-pointing; deciding who was best and who was not. We were a team; now we have to do an individual analysis of "what I thought about them." Can't this post mortem wait while we savor the fellowship that comes with success? No it can't. While there isn't always a correlation between the ratings of a trip as calculated by a survey - by its very nature an inadequate measure of human response - and as calculated by the trip's impact on the teens, the results of the surveys are important tools in fine tuning the BCM process. They help quantify and make possible a comparison of boys' trip A with Girls' trip E, of Yosemite trip D with Rockies trip B. They are a tangible way of demonstrating to generous sponsors that their donations make a difference. But maybe there is a better way. What if we could document that moment when a group of tough city teens crests a ridge and collectively takes a deep breath at the sight of the immense valley below them. Or if we could offer as evidence a teen who has trudged single file along a monotonous path for the whole day, and around the campfire says with a sigh of satisfaction, "And I thought this was going to be boring." Could we record the moment when a group emerges into a meadow from an hour's hiking through a wooded area and sees across the meadow a magnificent range of mountains, many still with snow on the peaks, others slightly veiled in clouds. How can we capture that moment when, as if on a signal, the kids all take out their disposable cameras - for a picture they won't need to remember that vista for the rest of their lives. What if we just tell people how the time to set up and break camp was cut in half by day three, and no one needed to tell anyone else when or what or how to do anything - things just got done while everyone talked about how well they slept and the day ahead. Life is measured not by the number of breaths we take, but by the number of breathtaking moments we experience. Nevertheless, I suppose we still need to count those breaths to keep ourselves on track. I guess that means surveys. Bummer.
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