Wordtrails™
The adventure starts here.
Games create new worlds for people to enter and explore where we all agree to play by new rules.
While the word “game” may have become synonymous with winning and losing,
children remind us that games have a long and beautiful history of offering worlds of imagination and pretend.
This game offers the chance to imagine and explore a world where there is no such thing as explanation.
Where did this game come from?
The game began with a vision, one night in May 2021, when I (Scout) was camping out in the Nevada desert. I was sleeping in my truck, and woke up in the night with one of those marvelous epiphanies that can seem like the answer to everything. I was watching an internal dialogue between the part of me that absolutely insisted that I get out and dance in the moonlight to settle this epiphany into my body, and the part of me that said, “Seriously? Are you kidding me right now? Do you remember how dusty it is out there?? No way!”
Sigh.
How many times have I sat and watched these two duke it out inside me. Yes, no. Stay, go. Stand up, sit down. Speak up, shut up…
In the middle of the escalating debate, from out of nowhere, a chip appeared in the air above my head. I can call it a vision now, but in the moment it was as real as could be. And as I watched, two hands came up, took hold of the chip from either side, and came back down. With a chip in each hand!
It became clear that the hands were mine, and that there were TWO chips, where there had CLEARLY been just one.
I looked at the chips, and saw that each one carried a single word.
My left hand was holding the word CAN and my right hand was holding the word HAVE TO.
The Two Original Chips
That was the beginning of the game. Over the next three years the game has come into being. Sometimes gradually, chip by chip…sometimes with a sudden quantum leap, with a cascade of chips arriving to introduce a whole new question. And here we are today, with 17 questions, 300 suggested answers, 50 actions, 12 trinkets and the one simple rule.
I imagine the game itself saying:
Come on, step in. Give me a try. Let’s see what happens, when you stop thinking you can and have to explain things, and we just play together.
Where is the game now?
Right now, the game is poised for its next level of real in the world at a much higher level of production. We have ordered 1,500 sets which will be in our hands in the fall of 2024.
Where’s it going?
Well, for me that’s the big, exciting question! So far, the game has largely charted its own course, and I fully anticipate that will continue.
We will have it for sale here on this site, which will be offered as a limited edition of signed and numbered copies.
We’ve built the pricing structure to support giving away many games, so we get it seeded out into the world, to where it needs and wants to go. Between us on the game team, we have a wide range of influential friends whose hands we want to get it into.
Scout will be traveling with the game, introducing it into various communities, businesses and non-profits, giving a wide range of people a chance to see what it might do for them, and the people they want to help.
The overriding truth of the game experience is that it is a true co-creation. There really is no part of this game that has been anything other than a communal creation informed by feedback and ideas from every single person who has played it.
Team Building
There is good evidence that this is a powerful tool for team building and bonding. It appears to simultaneously build individual agency and a desire for the enhanced creativity of working together as a team.
Many people are finding ways to build the game into both established and newly forming teams. Since the game helps remove natural fears or resistance to entering unknown territory, it’s a perfect fit for this usage.
Some examples:
– A local high school volleyball coach is using it to get her team synched up for the season.
– In a preliminary meeting to design a new website, the game worked to bring everyone into a shared space of being on the same team, working together to answer interesting creative questions.
There are specific organizations we plan to approach about creating a personalized edition, using the language of their unique culture. Might this be ab idea for you? If so, let’s talk!
Growth Culture
Since the game levels the playing field, setting the stage and fostering a space for healthy curious and inclusive conversation, we are very interested in making the game widely available to individuals or groups who could use help creating such a space for the conversations that lead to getting diverse needs and desires heard and honored, with new actions taken across the board.
A few examples:
– Using the game as a tool for people entering new life phases together, such as empty nesting parents and their kids going away to school, shifts into retirement, moving a parent into a new level of care.
– Teachers and students resetting their relationship after the student has achieved a new level of proficiency. An example: A flight instructor soloing a student might use the game to help the student reset their personal agency before the solo flight.
There are many people who have let us know they want to find a way to use the game as a business of their own, hosting game events. Again, an idea we absolutely support and will be exploring with curiosity and interest.
As we meet with more diverse groups and communities, we will certainly be hearing of other questions and collections that we couldn’t think of on our own. Please be in touch if you have an idea.
Expansion Packs
As the game grows, other questions show up. We already have a list of additional questions with possible answers that will be made available as we move forward.
There are also specific expansion packs we will offer, to help personalize the game to support specific people and communities who are experiencing change, and need to reset relationships as part of the process.
TESTIMONIALS
This game levels the playing field, and creates safety, in an amazing way.
It gives me a place where I am actually, truly safe. Not safe because someone else says I am, or because I say I am, not safe because someone gave me permission to be – I’m safe because no one else can in any way make me unsafe.
The safety is real. Actual.
I am safe to be me, OK in myself, OK to explore myself and my relationship with others and with life in a way I have never experienced in the presence of other people.
What did you like?
That there’s no winner or loser, and no objective.
Powerful Tool for Guidance and Team Building!
In getting ready for a challenging multi-week backpacking trip, we used this unique tool/process to set our shared intention for the trip.
We didn’t know each other very well when we started and our “Word Trail” process was a wonderfully helpful and important way to bring us together as a team. In a fun and intuitive way, the game guided us to six key words as the core things to guide our trip.
We referred to and reflected on them a number of times during our journey when we ran into challenges. Thanks Scout for your vision and wisdom in creating and sharing this wonderful tool!
One of the things about the game for me that I really appreciate is that it is neutral.
Not skewed towards a bias, a gender, a sexual preference, a socioeconomic status, labels, titles or anything.
It is a truly neutral and protected safe space to explore at my own pace. It allows me freedom and time to do what I want to do within it.
It is liberating.
Which actually is the alternative world?
I found it very insightful into my own feelings honestly. The squirrel analogy was spot on! Also, it was great being introduced to the “alternative world” the game offered. In hindsight, it really isn’t an alternative world, but actually the world you open up for yourself closing out the influences that exist in this current world we live in!
I am thrilled you stuck around, honestly talking to you afterwards helped open up a new view (I.e. the circle of experts and play at the center).
I appreciate it more than you know!
What was most fun about playing?
- Seeing my thoughts in visual form in a way I could physically move them, organize them, categorize them.
- Being with others, changing the way we played each time.
- Learning, imagining and growing
Because I don’t have to explain, I don’t have to know. I am free.
I am left feeling totally satisfied and in love with with my own conclusion, that I feel down to my bones:
After all this, all is well. Any sense of obligation I have felt, to be or to pretend to be anything other than me, who I am, has been vaporized.
It’s not that I necessarily know who I am any more than I did before playing…
It’s just that it’s fine to not know.
I can wonder.
Because I don’t have to explain, I don’t have to know.
I am free.
And it’s all fine.
I can carry on.
Thank you
Euphoric
I felt euphoric for a few days after playing, and can’t pinpoint why. I simply felt freedom after playing.
I didn’t want to stop
When I heard about the game “WordTrails” for the first time, I did not know at all what to expect. I was just told that there was no explanation needed and a lot of times, we are expecting an explanation before we are getting ourselves into something unknown.
But as soon as I started playing, I didn’t want to stop and I understood, that sometimes no explanation allows us to express ourselves more honestly. Sometimes things don’t need an explanation because it takes away the core meaning.
There are so many ways to play WordTrails. You can play it just for yourself, or with someone else, everything is possible and every game can look completely different.
I think I never played a game that made me think so much about my unconscious thinking patterns. Sometimes I felt I was stuck in these unconscious behaviors that did not allow me to unfold my full potential but the game made me realize that I have the power to change them. I just have to choose another path or another round little chip. Even if it is not always easy, the game made me aware of how I see the world and how I approach it. It is literally like a reset.
Thank you Scout for coming on my path at the moment I needed it and thank you for developing this beautiful game! I am sure it will help many more people out there! Lots of love!
Space and Time
You know that feeling of just wishing the world would just stop and give you a chance to get off for a few minutes?
That is a space this game provides me.
What’s the point, how do I win?
(Scout speaking here) I believe “winning” as it applies to the game is an entirely personal matter.
For me, it depends a lot on the energy I bring to it. If I arrive with an agenda, really wanting myself or someone else to “get” something specific from it, or even being vested in whether or not they like it, things can kind of crash and burn. I don’t end up going very deep into the experience, and I can end up personally dissatisfied. Still, I can’t call that not winning…because I have learned something and practiced something I’d like to do differently next time. So – who knows. It’s an ongoing question, this question about what is winning. What is it for you?
Another question might be – What’s in it for you? Do you feel like you find something useful? Is that a form of winning, or is winning something else? Would you rather be doing something else? Can you go do that now? Does the game – including being perfectly fine saying no to the game – move you closer to where you’d like to be?
Here’s a juicy question that arose out of a discussion the other day: Does me winning require that I have to beat you?
This is why I personally love the game. It creates a space where I get to exist inside the world as my heart knows it can be – a group of us working and playing together, building on one another’s offerings, getting more and more synched up. Feeling great together. I win, you win, we win!
Who is Scout?
The most defining element of me is that I was raised inside nature to an extraordinary degree.
I was a pretty active child, and was regularly kicked outside to get my mother some peace and quiet.
My parents loved to get out and about. We camped every summer, traveling all over to visit various national parks.
My dad was a Nuclear Engineer and a very accomplished carpenter, so our Sunday outings were visiting construction sites around the area, wandering through empty half-framed houses, seeing what people were up to. My brother and I would scramble around the site, kicking through the rubble, picking up slugs from the electrical boxes, chasing each other and our dog around for no particular purpose.
When I was eight, my world expanded. I took a class offered after school called Raising Wild Pets. When my mom saw how much that class lit me up, she kept her eyes peeled for other opportunities, and a few years later, when that same group offered more classes, she signed me up again.
It turns out that by that time the group had taken ownership of an old abandoned pumphouse, with permission and support from the City of Walnut Creek to turn it into a place designed to connect kids and nature.
And so it happened that at 11 years old, I became part of the team that set out to do just that.
For me, so much of my life dates from the moment I became part of the Museum.
It opened a youth of adventure, curiosity and wonder, hiking, backpacking, teaching, learning…just OUT there, in the world. Fully alive, part of a tribe of deeply connected young people.
There are a couple of other pinnacle moments that have defined the way I have moved through the world.
One of those was also when I was eight, in the year 1963. I have a full body memory of this moment.
There I was, hiding under my desk, looking out at the teacher as the final sounds of the air raid drill siren died away. I was not a stupid child, and I was not scared. If I had to name what I was, I think I would have to say dumbfounded.
As in, WTF…before I knew those words.
I mean, here I am, crouched under my desk, being told that this is the smartest and best thing to do if someone fires a nuclear warhead at me.
Seriously?! The entire and endless stream of stupidity that this choice illuminated, but no one was looking at or admitting was breathtaking. The soup of emotions and thoughts I was inside is quite a stew, with an overriding flavor of: THIS is the best the adults in this room can do? We are f*&%ked.
Of course, I did not know that word but there is no other word that captures the depth of the feeling of absolute…I see I still don’t have another word. But I can tell you, that was the moment when I stopped counting on the adults in the room, and began to think for myself in ways that have never let me go back to trusting anything resembling “conventional wisdom.”
Scroll backward in time, to one more defining moment.
This is a very hard story for me to tell because I have developed so much profound compassion for where my father was, in his own journey as a scared wounded human man. I offer no blame or shame, in telling this story. I am NOT telling this to pass judgment and I hope that will come through.
The moment: I was playing with a stack of quarters I had found in my mom’s purse. I was in a place of absolute profound happiness. Satisfaction. Everything was JUST RIGHT in my world as I was conscious of nothing but my own joy, playing with these beautiful, clinking, shiny things. Nothing was present but my unadulterated joy.
I don’t know how old I was – pretty darn small. Barely verbal, I think. My dad came into the room, saw me, and asked, Where did you get those quarters? Still feeling safe and happy, oblivious to any danger, I answered easily, I found them in mom’s purse.
I can’t say what happened next, except that my world exploded.
I only remember the feeling of being blown out, way out of my body, into outer space. Floating in dark, lonely space, wondering. Since that moment, in some ways, my life has felt like trying to get back into my body…and terrified to do so. Wanting so much to be back inside, but also screaming in resistance to going back in, fighting like a cornered wild animal. Knowing I can’t not do it even though I may not survive it.
So, there you have several parts of a picture of me.
And perhaps an idea of what it has felt like to move through my life as a small animal. Always absolutely beyond question knowing myself to be a part of things – a part of nature at least – but not at all sure about who or what I was in relation to other humans. Am I a true human? A part of me always feeling on the outside, observing, wondering, trying to figure it all out.
As I have moved through, there are things I have come to know of myself.
I am happiest when I am one who helps imagine, design and build things that work well and feel good.
My father taught me to be very competent with these skills. Yes, my same father who inadvertently blew me into space, gave me the tools with which to return.
I had a second “father” – the director of the Museum. Under Sam Smoker’s tutelage, learning about nature and myself through personal experience, I grew up with a very deep understanding of and respect for nature and natural systems. From that immersion, I am now one who absolutely trusts in a very big picture – the natural world follows patterns and laws which work with breathtaking beauty, consistency and constancy.
Those patterns and laws can be depended on, absolutely.
Based on all my experiences, and the questions and answers they have brought me, I have found and can speak to what it is I trust, which is this:
Life is a conversation.
I can follow any path I choose, for whatever reason might move me. That is my free will.
I step in.
There will be predictable consequences – responses – for my choices and actions.
Life makes a step.
When I receive each next response from life, I can then make my next choice.
The dance is on.
The more I understand and move in concert with natural patterns, the more I am personally going to enjoy my time on earth.
The more I am relaxed and enjoying myself, the more I am a part of things, and the more respectful and respected I become, and the safer I am – both safe FROM things, and safe FOR things.
The more safe, relaxed and respectful I become, the better things work throughout the world inside and around me. And I believe this helps everyone. The more I can be part of helping others feel safe, relaxed and respected, the better of we all are. Without exception.
This is the territory the game has come from.
For me, the game has been one of the last pieces of the puzzle I needed in order to be able to get back inside my own body and function as a true loving, curious, respectful human in the company of other curious humans.
In a world were all of us are making our own choices, wanting and learning what it means and how to be respectful in our ongoing conversations.
May it serve you as well as it has me, in whatever way it might. May it bring you useful questions that move you into good places on your own path.
What terrifies me, what excites me? What am I most amazed at?
What do I wonder about?
What am I grateful for?
What do I need now?
How do I imagine knowing that I’ve arrived, how do I imagine feeling when I get there?