The Adventure

When I returned home from the Young Men’s Adventure Weekend (YMAW), my gorgeous wife and my entertaining son greeted me at the front door of our building. He looked as though he grew a couple of inches as he barreled around the corner at top speed and into my arms shouting “Hi, Dad. Hi, Dad.” He was beaming, she was beaming and I was on fire.

This was my fourth year on the YMAW production team and the most encompassing year yet. As the channel of communication, I worked diligently every moment to inspire action and team spirit. Every year amidst the hard work, scheduling of men’s time and all other challenges associated with community work, I find it is always full of profound and life altering moments. The Young Men’s Adventure Weekend is by no means a summer camp.



The fact that the YMAW Society has been producing this event for twenty years tells us that there is a need for these types of initiatives in our communities. This year we had attendees from Vancouver to Yellowknife, California and Idaho joining in the adventure. For 48 hours young men are free to discover and explore the man they really can be. In turn they perform their trials and tribulations on the YMAW stage, with the full unequivocal support of the YMAW team.



I remember distinctly not wanting to be treated like a boy when I was young. I yearned for the responsibility that came with working on and completing something that felt important. It simply began with finishing chores and taking care of my younger brother but it was amped up once I had my first paying job. During this past weekend, I saw that same change in the eyes of a lot of young men with a few of them already feeling ready to cross the line into the production team side with all the men. I look forward to them joining one day.



In the meantime, it’s about getting the word out there so more young men get the opportunity to join in on the adventure. We promoted YMAW everywhere including youth organizations, park boards, Rotary and Lions clubs, all the newspapers and television media outlets. We continue our web presence with our website www.ymaw.com and Facebook pages. This year I even tweeted @Oprah for thirty days straight leading up to the day the young men boarded the bus to the camp, in hopes she would invite Brad Leslie, co-founder of YMAW to the show. I really started to get into it as I tried to write the perfect tagline for YMAW each day.

“We’ll help you explore what you already possess.”

“The forest will give you the space to be a man.”

“We’ll honor your word.”

“We’ll respect your time and help you fill it with adventure, courage, spirit, purpose, outrageous fun and love.”

“We will eat like kings, compete like warriors and grow strong like tall pine in the wilderness.”

“We are blessed to witness boys become young men as they work together to unlock their personal distractions from staying the course of manhood.”

‘We cannot completely quantify all the levels of transformation that occur in only 48 hours.”

“150 of us come together and agree to bring our best 110% for 48 hours.

“Before the weekend I had one great brother, now I have a hundred.”



Our young men arrived on Friday night excited and unaware of the adventure that lay ahead as they hiked down the big hill towards camp headquarters. We watched as they left the city behind them and walked by the men welcoming them to the Young Men’s Adventure Weekend. The first words they heard were Respect, Honor, Truth, Responsibility, Leadership, Teamwork, Commitment and Dedication. Within minutes our teams were selected; Earth team, Water, Fire, Minerals, Nature team and then they were off to set up their camps before circling up around the fire. The first night they began to settle in to their camps while the next day and half they would run, climb, swim, defend, sweat, laugh, cry, be challenged, be heard, lead and fall asleep with pure exhaustion.



Saturday’s Quest found the teams working hard together to complete all stations in time and to truly connect with their teammates as they learned more about themselves and their role as young men. As they searched for clues within the forest the coyote’s trickery often sent them on wild goose hunts, eventually leading them into a chaotic ambush in the woods! The coyote spirit would continue to reveal itself throughout the weekend ripping up our huge canopy in half, misplacing belongings and testing us along our journey. The evening’s main event once again proved to be one of the most profound and cathartic exercises of the entire weekend. Here we learned the strong relationship between fire and water while reminding us all that we are not alone. It had been a very long day and while everyone retired to their sleeping bags others spent the night by the fire listening to the coyotes serenade.



As Sunday rolled in so did some welcome clouds to help cool everyone off on this hot adventurous weekend. We worked together as one huge team and did some community work around the site, we discussed our new future as Men and ended off with an outrageous battle game of US vs. THEM. Oh yeah, the Enforcer received a super soaker ambush and before you knew it the Young Men were saying their good byes and boarding the bus home.



In the middle of this recession we still managed to welcome 50+ young teenagers to leave a part of themselves behind in the wilderness and return home inspired new men. What an amazing weekend! It’s now been two weeks since I watched those young men come off the bus and drive away with their families. We’ve already heard back loads of positive feedback from parents and the young men but for the most part we’ll never know the full impact of our work. Young Men’s Adventure Weekend Society, Co-Founder Brad Leslie says,

“Thank you on behalf of these young men who, 20 years down the road, may not remember us, but their lives will be a little better and their circumstances will better because we made a difference today. I have seen that we actually DO change the future by doing this work.”



I’m thinking about my son and the Next Generation of Men. I think of the young men of YMAW and how they connected with the outdoors to explore and discover themselves this year. Sometimes I call my son “nature boy” with his enthusiasm for rocks, water and trees. Everyday the outdoors is a new adventure for him. I think he’s doing great. I think there are a lot of good young men out there and it has been a life altering experience communicating with some of them at the Young Men’s Adventure Weekend.