Wind Mountain, the bump in the middle of this photo, is a minor 1,900 foot peak that sits prominently on the Washington side of the Columbia River Gorge separating the states of Washington and Oregon.
Sandwiched between Wind Mountain and Dog Mountain, from where the above photo was taken, is the Wind River valley, much of which is an active, though slow moving land slide. In the mid 1980s when I was first introduced to this valley, it was sliding into the Columbia at a rate of several feet horizontal per year. With more recent droughts, the slide has likely slowed down substantially, however the area remains a place of constant change, with shifting river flows, trees leaning at odd angles, lakes with yearly shifting shorelines. Since the Wind Mountain Group exists to facilitate improvement in dynamically changing environments, Wind Mountain seemed an apt metaphor.
There is a further personal dimension to this place which inspired the name give to this site.
I started college in the fall of 1983, fresh out of the US Navy, having spent much of the prior four years under the North Atlantic ocean (I was a submariner, you know, no windows, no natural light, recycled air etc.). So when the first post Navy summer came around, I wanted to be outdoors as much as possible, and for reasons I’ll eventually explain elsewhere, I also wanted to try my hand working with kids. To achieve both objectives, I applied for, and was eventually hired to be a highly underpaid counselor at a summer resident camp nestled among the trees of the Wind River Valley. As I tell those young ladies outside the grocery store every fall, when they try to peddle me some of their Girl Scout cookies (which I invariably buy), they can’t pull much over on me because, yes, I was a girl scout too.
After six years in the Navy, working for the Girl Scouts of America was culture shock! Coming from that background of being locked up in a submerged sewer pipe with 115 of my best all-male submarine buddies, I was now one of only three males among 32 counselors and more than 300 girls. From the command and control structure of the military, I was introduced to collaborative culture; from an environment of stoic masculinity, where anger was the only emotion one dared show, I was suddenly expected to lead my 20, ten and eleven year-old charges in joyful song. (I truly don’t have a voice for song.) It was a life changing experience.
That place and those people nestled between Wind and Dog mountains, taught me much of the foundations of what I practice today. It was there that I learned the power of collaborative processes and emotional intelligence. It was there that I first learned the value play, creative chaos, and how to keep a group from going beyond the brink into full chaos. It was there that I learned the healing power of a positive environment, even for a child who had suffered abuse.
What is in a name is all those things which make for life altering experiences for the positive.