From the Director’s Desk

by Rob Terry, Executive Director

About a lifetime ago, at my first Wilderness Risk Management Conference (an annual gathering co-hosted by the Student Conservation Association, National Outdoor Leadership School and Outward Bound) I attended a session led by a well-known attorney whose practice focuses on liability related issues in outdoor programming. Among the many pearls of wisdom he imparted was the strong recommendation that a program should never be advertised as ‘safe.’ He went on to explain that telling participants that something is ‘safe’ not only sets up an unrealistic illusion of control but actually winds up making programs more likely to experience incidents that lead to personal injury. The false promise aspect of his premise made sense to me, but I couldn’t quite grasp how calling something safe could increase the likelihood that a participant would be injured.

He went on to explain (a little tongue-in-cheek) that, in spite of all we’d been taught about the English language, safety is actually a verb. What he meant was that the relative safety of any given activity is the result of the decisions that individual participants make. When an institution, or leader, proclaims an activity safe at the outset, what they in fact do is inadvertently relieve participants of personal responsibility—which is counterproductive because it is participants carefully considering, and taking responsibility for, their own actions that ultimately does the most to decrease the likelihood of incident or injury. This, of course, does not mean that institutions and leaders don’t play a critical role in reducing risk exposure for participants. In fact, reducing accident potential by identifying and working to minimize environmental, equipment, and human factors that can lead to accidents is among the most important work that outdoor leaders engage in. For Merck Forest, as for many institutions that run programming in the outdoors, our risk management strategy lives at the nexus of culture, policy, and training. Among the cultural components that we’ve instituted here at Merck Forest is an all-staff weekly review of incidents and “near misses” coupled with a preview of anticipated hazards. The hazard lists of late have felt unusually potent. Recent reviews have featured the close-at-hand seasonal standards such as snow, ice, wind, cold temps, hazard trees coupled with the ubiquitous threat of a surging global pandemic, even extending to the acknowledgement of national civil unrest.

In the face of these very real hazards, I am happy to report (knock on wood), that we have not seen a surge in incidents or injuries in 2020 or 2021 so far here at Merck Forest. We have remained open to the public (in accordance with state travel guidelines) throughout the pandemic, we have run programs whenever Governor Scott’s executive order has allowed, and we have gone about our essential work on the farm and in the woods. I write this to express my gratitude to our staff, visitors, participants, and partners who, through their actions and decisions, have helped contribute to a culture of personal responsibility and respect for one another that has made safety a clear priority. I also write to encourage everyone to stay in the game. It has been a long haul. I know there are folks from out of state who have delayed trips, others who have decided to opt out of hikes and workshops due to scratchy throats, and many visitors who have worked hard to maintain personal space on the trails.

These decisions matter. In fact, more than anything else, it is the personal responsibility demonstrated by our staff and visitors that has kept our community as safe as reasonably possible during these difficult days.

Board Of Trustees

George Hatch

President

Ann Jackson

Vice President

Kat Deeley Secretary

Keld Alstrup Treasurer

Dinah Buechner-Vischer

Jeromy Gardner

Jim Hand

Mark Lourie

Sam Schneski

Sue Van Hook

Brian Vargo

STAFF

Stephanie Breed

VC Coordinator

Cara Davenport

Education Manager

Tim Duclos

Conservation Manager

Dylan Durkee

Farm Manager

Chris Ferris-Hubbard

Education Director

Kathryn Lawrence

Assistant Executive Director

Marybeth Leu

Communications Coordinator

Liz Ruffa

Advancement Director

Rob Terry Executive Director

Cara Davenport: pp. 6, 12, 13

• Google Photos: pp. 18, 19

• Mara Hearst: p. 16

Tim Duclos: front & back covers, pp. 4, 5, 9, 10-11, 14, 15, 17, 19, 20, 21, 24

Chris Hubbard: pp. 3, 12, 13

• Anna Terry: p. 14, 23

• Rob Terry: p. 8, 22