Who is Scout?

How did I come to be who I am, able to create this game?

There have definitely been key defining elements of my life that have woven together over my seventy years.

1.  I was raised inside nature to an extraordinary degree. I grew up in a place and time when nature was right outside the front door and I was regularly kicked out into it to get my mother some peace and quiet. My family camped every summer, traveling widely to visit various national parks.

2. My parents were very active people. My dad was an engineer and a builder, 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. I grew up inside an engineering mindset.

3. I have had extraordinary experiences of being part of powerfully synched up teams. When I was eight, I took an after school class 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. 

By that time the group had negotiated an agreement with the city of Walnut Creek, California and taken ownership of an old abandoned East Bay MUD pumphouse, with permission and support to turn it into a place designed to connect kids and nature.

And so it happened that at 11 years old, I became an integral part of the team that set out to do just that.

Everything important in my life stems from the interweaving of these conditions.

There are a couple of other moments of peak intensity that have contributed in a defining way to how I have moved through the world. Traumas that I have carried without seeing or understanding, until I finally came to be able to.

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. I was a lot of other things – but I don’t think I was scared.

I mean, here I am, under a desk. Being told that this is the smartest and best thing to do if someone fires a nuclear warhead at me. Wait one sec. Can we even talk about the utter ridiculousness of Nuclear Winter? Who would WANT to survive into that? No thank you. And…the whole endless stream of stupidity that this choice illuminated, but no one was looking at.

The soup of emotions and thoughts I was inside is quite a stew, with an overriding flavor of – “Seriously? 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. 

And there’s one other defining moment that is a very hard story for me to tell because I have developed so very much compassion for where my father was, in his own journey as a scared wounded human, that I really don’t want to tell the story to anyone who might jump into blame or shame. 

Please, treat this story with compassion. I am NOT telling this story to pass judgment: in fact, quite the opposite. I ask that you respect that.

The story is this: I was in a place of absolute profound happiness. Satisfaction. Everything was JUST RIGHT in my world as I was playing with a stack of quarters that I had found in my mom’s purse. I was oblivious to anything but my own joy with these beautiful, clinking, shiny things.

I don’t know how old I was – pretty darn small. Barely verbal, I think. My dad came into the room, saw me, and lost it. Where did you get those quarters? Still feeling safe and happy, oblivious to any danger, I answered, Mom’s purse.

I can’t say what happened. Except that my world exploded. I was blown out, way out, into outer space, and since that moment, my entire life has felt like a very important part of me has been trying to get back into my body…and terrified to do so.

So, there you have a picture of me, and perhaps an idea of what it has felt like to move through my life as a small animal, absolutely beyond question a part of things – a part of nature at least, but not at all sure about whether or not I’m a true human, with a part of me always feeling on the outside, observing.

As I have moved through this life, there are things I have come to accept and own about myself. 

I am one who helps imagine, design and build things that work well and feel good. 

I am one who trusts in a very big picture – a natural world that follows patterns and laws which work with breathtaking beauty, consistency and constancy. Those patterns and laws can be depended on, absolutely. I can follow any path I choose, for whatever reason might move me, and there will always, for me, be one truth.

I am one who now understands that the more I can relax and move in concert with natural patterns, the more I am personally going to enjoy my time on earth, and the world around me is a better place for all of us when that is true. I am no longer meddling in things that are not mine, and showing up powerfully for the things that are.

This is the territory this game came from..

May it serve you as well as it has me, in whatever way it might.