Sturgeon Lake, deep in Ontario’s Quetico wilderness, is a lake so large that it often shows up on large-scale provincial maps. A skilled canoe team will typically spend most of a day crossing it along the east-west axis. One overcast morning, so utterly still it surely presaged a big blow, we set out from an island camp trying to get off the exposed lake before the weather turned sour.
We were reveling in our silent glide though early morning mists when, to our surprise, we encountered–as far from land as it was possible to be–a long strand of spider web floating just above our heads.
Some spiders travel by shooting a web over to their destination, but it didn’t seem possible that a tiny spider could manufacture enough silk to span a lake of that size. In fact, it isn’t. There is, however, a species of tiny spider that travels by shooting a strand into the air and letting the wind carry web and spider where it may. While our arachnid fellow traveler no doubt acted in response to biological/evolutionary imperatives, my first reaction was to conclude that jumping into the wind over Sturgeon Lake constituted the ultimate leap of faith.
Guiding organizations, especially in unsettled times, often requires what may appear to be that very same kind of leap. Economic turmoil, political unrest and general social malaise require pretty determined responses lest the organization be swept away.
However, it’s a mistake to confuse risk-taking with reckless behavior. Recklessness could be defined as action(s) driven by emotion without the benefit of insight, knowledge of all the contingencies, and/or true understanding of the situation.
Risk-taking, on the other hand, may involve a leap into some unknown territory, but springs from an analysis of the possibilities and all the inherent risks. The "Darwin Awards" celebrate the former every year. Teddy Roosevelt illustrates the latter when he charged up San Juan Hill into the presidency.
Sometimes, we just have to gather our best intelligence, launch our webs and make the leap. There are far worse places to be than floating above Sturgeon Lake.