Reflections on a Mountain Lake

There are conversations that you know will echo in the records of your personal history, if not the pages of some broader text. One such conversation that is marked indelibly in my reflections took place in the spring of 2005, at the mountain lake of Ochrid, Macedonia. Perched on the wall of a five-hundred year old monastery, Tom Weaver, Brodie Boland and I took a break from the conference we were orchestrating to connect in the tangible stillness of the afternoon. Brodie and I were completing our term together as Directors of Eastern and Western Europe, respectively, and Tom had taken a break from his career, designing the future of schooling across the UK, to chair our leadership summit.

It wasn't so much the conversation, although it was as far reaching and honest a trialogue as any, as it was the meeting of the three of us upon this rare mountain lake, at a tipping point in each of our individual journeys. We were young and powerful with much to be proud of, yet humbled by this place, by each other's presence, and the most distinct feeling that whatever unfolded from this moment would be marked with the challenge and call that names history.

The image of those mountains towering above the water in the distance, the confidence and trust we shared, the laughter, insight and ability; these will be defining pieces of my youth. In our best of times, we may look back on them lightly, but in the cyclical moments of darkness I do not underrate how important such experiences were in helping me find the light.

Tom continued his career at the cutting edge of designing learning environments through ever larger enterprises and now has taken the entrepreneurial leap. He has also launched a phenomenal blog that puts my Codex to shame. Brodie went on to lead our organisation, join a strategy consultancy and soon enough will take an academic turn, in the whichever premier graduate institution is lucky enough to earn him. He, of course, uses his blog Kyosaku to help us realise and release.