Dawn came quietly to the Boundary Waters. Fog hovered low over the lake as Trailmen eased out of their tents and toward the shoreline. Tin mugs steamed in the cool air. Headlamps flicked on as damp maps were unfolded and routes were traced with cold fingers. Boots were wet. The gear was heavy. The…
“When I first met Titus, I think he probably would have rather poked himself in the eye with an ice pick than stand up and talk to people,” Darren, a Trail Life leader in Denton, Texas, recalls.
There are different kinds of strength. We tend to associate the word with big muscles and athletic prowess. Or maybe we think of inner strength, a kind of unshakable resilience that allows a man to weather life’s storms and accomplish something noteworthy. But whatever form it takes, masculine…
Masculinity. We can barely utter the word without adding qualifiers like: toxic, orhealthy, orbiblical, ortraditional. Alone, it is treated as a pathology: dangerous, outdated, or oppressive — something to be managed rather than modeled.
Some men walk well-worn paths. Others have to blaze the trail themselves. When Christopher first walked into his Trail Life Troop in upstate New York, there was no blueprint waiting for him. The Troop was new—still small, uncertain, and figuring things out. There were no older boys to follow, no…
At 15 years old, most boys today are hardly expected to get themselves up for school on time. But that’s not because boys are incapable of taking responsibility and being dependable. It’s because we don’t expect them to. We hesitate to trust them with real responsibility.
There are moments in a boy’s life that look small from the outside. A ceremony. A decision about where to spend Thursday nights. A choice of which friends to run with. But heaven and history both know better. Because a life is often steered—not by one critical moment—but through a series of…
