Success!

Op/Ed, info, from Jim Hennegan, of www.justgoodtrails.com

I had to share this as sometimes we get frustrated and lose sight of what we're doing and why.

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So, how do we measure success in the off road pro access arena? Want to know something? This was a major bother to me just a short time ago.

It seems we shout, work, volunteer, and move forward with a resolve every day, but do not see much feedback. Our resolve often is met with a few catcalls or negative responses. However we move on. I think that those of us who are moved to keep these trails open for everyone just keep pounding on, it is those on the fringe I think we need to assure. You see success seems to be measured in small ways a lot round here.

Recently I joined Facebook; I soon noticed Del Albright was a member so I hooked up with him as friends. Now I get his daily reports on what is going on in his life. While he recently was on the border to border run and posted a lot of comments. I was at work talking about some friends of the trip and soon a few guys were asking how he could do so much trail without roads. This was soon a discussion about public lands and how we are battling to keep them open. About pro access organizations and how the future was a day to day battle to keep these trails and areas open. That met with a few interesting comments but bottom line is that yesterday I had one of those guys come up and ask what he could do to help.

Success

Over a few comments on Facebook

Because Del Albright tried new technology.

I know, it seems small, but each time we win someone over, each time we plant a seed, each time we get someone to acknowledge our battle we have a success. We could measure it by huge Land Issue successes in court, but those are not the biggest successes we have. Oh they are huge on the horizon, but each of those were possible because we reached someone who had the talent to see that issue through.

We are not all lawyers, we are not all writers, some of us are simple Adopt A Trail workers, some of us just go to public meetings and clap in the background. There is a job for everyone. You know that guy who loves to camp 3 cubicles down, he could be the next guy to start volunteering somewhere and be a leader in that area. But we need a small success first, we need to get him the message in a way he understands. Maybe a weekend on trail with a small talk somewhere about Access rights. Then we need to talk to the guy who fishes those mountain streams, the hunters, the hikers, we are all users of the public lands.

The small successes are those that matter, they set us up for the big ones.

Let us take huge pride in the small ones, and realize these are the ones that we need most, each new member of our community is a number, and we need these numbers to grow. Go out and help build this number one new mind at a time.

thanks for reading

James G Hennegan

James can be contacted email

BajaEdition@Gmail.com

Or by going to

WWW.JustGoodTrails.com