Thin air and leaving trails

I love mountain trails.  I could actually live in the mountains with no regrets.  The air is thin, granted. But that forces me to be in better physical condition than I otherwise would be.  The people are just as thin (in population), but that forces me to choose the thinking habits in my own mind better.  I can see all around me from the mountain peaks, even the shorter peaks.  Getting there requires going through some thickly forested areas, but the view from the top is stunning and clear.  I can see the whole picture.  In the forests it seems like there are some patterns, but they break off - the trail bends behind the trees - and the patterns have to be guessed at.

Beyond this, there is not a road for the masses of cars to come to the peaks.  Just little trails.  There aren't that many that want to breathe thin air, and be guessing in the forests up to the peak.  Usually, the trail is wider at the foot of the mountain and narrows the closer to the peak it gets. 

I wish I could talk to educators who deal with the masses, who make plans for the masses, who teach ideas that could define people, but that are handled in such uniform ways as to dilute the information for the youth they care so much for.  Could we teach some basics that allow the ability to walk and then turn people loose on the trails they seek?  People like to find trails that lead to peaks.  It's just that many peaks exist, and some like to travel to far peaks, others to closer peaks, still others who hang around the closest peaks.

Teachers don't have the knowledge of all the trails to all the peaks, but they do have the knowledge of the survival skills, the fundamentals, needed.  However, these skills are not learned passively but actively.  Youth need to be given information, yes, but more importantly, they need practice at gathering actual wood and starting actual fires.  They should hunt actual animals, snakes, fish, and pick berries to put in their actual stomachs so they will know what the trails are like that lead to the peaks around them.  They have to sit around fires and sleep under the actual stars at night.  They have to get used to actual distances in order to build stamina on the trails that lead to thin air at the peaks.

I love mountain trails.  And while all of the above is true, there is one kind of mountain peak that requires people to find their own ways to get to the top.  The best, but the most difficult trails of all are the ones that people leave behind them, the ones they forge.  I'm thinking that there might be a few more people like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerburg, and Elon Musk if the practice for survival skills were more in abundance.  It would be easier to follow small trails that disappear, and so leave the opportunity to leave one behind, if the survival skill to follow trails were taught before people left for going on their journeys.

I look forward to the day when Muriel Strode's statement is commonplace:

 Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. 

(from her poem, "Wind-wafted Wild Flowers," 1903)