Being on a Mountain Leader training course
was like learning to be invisible:
If you are good, you won’t look at the map.
When you look at the map, they think you are lost.
If you say ‘I think’, they think you don’t know.
So
Remember the map, speak with assurance,
Plan for the worst, correct mistakes fast.
Then no-one will know what it is you don’t know.
Be accurate to within 20 metres,
Even in fog, and rain, and the dark.
If you get this right they will never know
Not
How close the cliff, how deep the drop
How narrow the margin, how fine the risk.
They will never know how much you know.
There are other ways to be invisible.
We talk about being light for the world
Some people do that in a big way
With lectures and podcasts, books and sermons
Prison sentences and media postings.
But for others, the salty ones,
Perhaps having the map in their head
The map that has other people on
Rarely getting lost, and only to within 20 metres,
Is all they need
To invisibly make the world a better place.