Coaching Helped Me Rebuild After Grief; Now I'm Paying It Forward

Man of Merit began as a self-coaching tool. In 2011, I was about to turn 40. In my first post, I joked that I was having a midlife crisis. I had already lost more than 150 pounds, a transformation I wrote about on MyFitLife2day, and I wanted to do something with the fitness I had regained. I set out to learn outdoor skills and complete the Boy Scout merit badges I had left unfinished as a teenager.

Now I’m 55, on the other side of that crisis and making the most of my later midlife years as I quickly approach the next phase.

Looking back, I was trying to return to the boy I had been, curious, independent, eager to explore, and imagining the person I might become. I understood becoming a man of merit to mean setting goals, developing skills, and following through. The blog helped me turn those ideas into something I could work on.

For the next five years, I used Man of Merit to document the work I was doing. I took stock of my fitness and preparedness, assessed the skills I already had, and figured out what I needed to learn. The merit badges gave me a framework. Writing about my goals and progress helped me stay focused as I built up my life and moved in a direction I had chosen.

Then my mother died. In the months before her death, I had already begun to lose sight of myself. Within six months of her passing, I had gained more than 100 pounds. If I hadn’t needed to buy a whole new wardrobe, I might not have noticed how completely I had abandoned myself and the strong vision I once had for my life and my future.

I was living as if I didn’t care about living.

Eventually, I sought grief counseling. Through that counseling, I was brought back to the foundation I had laid during those years. My mind began to clear. My heart remains forever broken, but I began to find my trail again and see a way forward.

After counseling, I sought life coaching to help me get fully back on track. By then, I had regained all the weight I’d lost before turning 40 and found myself back at 460 pounds. This time, health issues complicated things. I began addressing atrial fibrillation and sleep apnea, and coaching helped me bring my focus back to the choices that could move me forward.

Now I’m back under 400 pounds. Based on the choices I’m making and the direction I’m heading, I’m on track to lose another 100 pounds over the next 18 months. I’m still learning from my past mistakes and adding new skills as I continue to shape the life I want.

I’ve carried a philosophy of lifelong learning with me for years. I even wrote a poem about it called Philosophy on Lifelong Learning.

Philosophy on Lifelong Learning

Learning must be a lifelong pursuit
If life is to have any meaning
Find yourself a mentor, because not
Everything is simple, and time is fleeting
Look inward for context to learn new things
Owe much to imagination and needing
Now is the time, and there's no place like here
Give up on excuses; start leading

Love your community and those around you
Every one of us deserves to be believed in
And if you're fortunate enough to have the skills
Recharge the people and teach them
Nothing's more gratifying than changing a life
In all of us lies the power to care
Never again say, "I'll wait 'til tomorrow"
Go the distance; Learn, teach, share

I’m bringing Man of Merit back for two reasons. First, I still have a lot to learn. I’m learning from past mistakes and developing new skills, including how to tell stories and connect with people through social media. Just as the merit badges gave me a framework when I was 40, I’m building new knowledge and skills for this next phase. I want to keep documenting what I’m learning and how I’m putting it into practice.

The second reason is that I want to help others. I believe people are creative, resourceful, and whole. My role as a coach is to partner with people as they clarify what matters to them, recognize the strengths they already have, and decide what they want to learn or change. I listen, ask questions, and reflect what I hear so they can discover their own answers and choose goals that feel meaningful to them. Then we can identify steps they are ready to take and ways to stay connected to what they’ve chosen. I want to meet people where they are and help them move toward a future self they can be proud of, discovering the man or woman of merit who already exists within them.

Man of Merit began as a way for me to coach myself through learning and change. Now I’m bringing it back to keep doing that work and to help others do it, too.

The Alchemy of Lifelong Learning: How I Used TikTok to Master Portuguese

I think of lifelong learning a little like glassblowing. An artist selects pieces of glass, applies heat to fuse them together, and shapes the molten glass into something beautiful. Each shard of colored glass contributes to the finished work, its distinct shape and color blending with the others as they fuse into a single creation.

I think learning works much the same way throughout our lives.

We accumulate knowledge and experiences through our jobs, friendships, travels, education, and the things that interest us. But learning isn't simply a matter of collecting experiences. We can deliberately draw on what we already know, combine that knowledge with new experiences, and use both to develop skills and pursue goals that matter to us.

Like the glassblower, we are the artists directing the process.

It was that idea I drew upon when I set out to build an income-generating social media presence. I took shards of knowledge from things I'd learned years earlier, combined them with skills I was still developing, and deliberately fused them together to create something new.

Around May or June of 2025, I identified two things I wanted to learn. First, I wanted to understand how to grow a social media audience that I could eventually monetize. Second, I wanted to improve my Portuguese.

I decided to create an opportunity to accomplish both goals at the same time.

I'd been watching Gary Vaynerchuk, better known as Gary Vee, talk about the importance of creating content and putting yourself out there. I was already making videos for YouTube in English, Spanish, and Portuguese, and experimenting with different languages on my original TikTok account, brianopolis.

I started thinking about how I could use TikTok's algorithm to connect with people in Brazil.

If I created content in Portuguese, perhaps the algorithm would introduce my videos to Brazilians who wanted to interact with me. I could practice the language, make friends, and learn how to build an audience through the same activity.

I had reason to believe this approach could work because I'd deliberately created a similar learning experience about 26 years earlier.

At the time, I'd moved to the New York City area for a job. I had already begun learning Portuguese, but I wanted to become fluent. So I made a conscious decision to live in Newark, New Jersey, where the Ironbound neighborhood had a large Brazilian community.

I wanted to surround myself with people who spoke Portuguese, make friends, and create opportunities to use the language in everyday life. I knew that if I wanted to improve my Portuguese, I needed more than books and lessons. I needed conversations, friendships, and regular interaction with people who spoke the language.

So I went where those opportunities existed.

And it worked. I made Brazilian friends, spent time in their community, and developed my Portuguese through everyday conversations and experiences. I had deliberately placed myself in an environment where learning could become part of my daily life.

Twenty-six years later, I realized I could apply the same approach without having to move anywhere.

This time, instead of physically going to a Brazilian community, I could use TikTok's algorithm to bring that community to me.

By creating videos in Portuguese, I could encourage the platform to introduce my content to people throughout Brazil. Those viewers could respond, follow me, and participate in conversations. Through livestreaming, I could speak directly with people from different parts of the country, all while sitting in my home in South Florida.

The technology had changed, but the learning strategy was essentially the same.

In Newark, I had deliberately moved into an environment where I could immerse myself in Portuguese. With Brian Brasil, I was deliberately creating that environment through social media.

I didn't need to travel to Brazil or relocate to another Brazilian neighborhood. I could use the algorithm, the videos I created, and the relationships I developed to bring opportunities for language immersion directly into my everyday life.

And this time, I could develop my Portuguese while simultaneously learning how to build a social media audience.

I was taking a learning strategy that had worked for me decades earlier, combining it with new technology and my experience creating content, and shaping it into something entirely new.

Another example of those shards of knowledge fusing together through intentional learning.

My first video was about as simple as you can imagine.

"Hi, I'm Brian. Who are you?"

That's it.

Today, that introductory video has approximately 292,000 views and has brought me about 10,500 followers. People are still discovering it more than a year after I published it. The video continues to reach new viewers, some of whom decide to follow my account and join the conversations I'm having with other Brazilians.

But the numbers are only part of the story.

From the beginning, I was deliberately working toward two learning goals. Every time I created a video or hosted a livestream, I had an opportunity to practice Portuguese while learning how to attract viewers and develop relationships with an audience.

I was observing which subjects interested people, how viewers responded to different videos, and how conversations developed during livestreams. At the same time, I was listening to regional accents, learning unfamiliar expressions, and becoming more comfortable speaking Portuguese spontaneously.

The two learning goals reinforced each other.

My interest in improving my Portuguese motivated me to keep creating content and interacting with people. Those interactions gave me practical experience with TikTok and helped me understand how to develop an audience.

I was also experimenting with different approaches to publishing content.

I'd create a video, publish it, observe how viewers responded, and use that information to make decisions about future videos. Some approaches attracted more interest than others. By comparing the results, I developed a better understanding of what encouraged people to watch, comment, and participate.

That's one of the things I find most interesting about adult learning. We can take responsibility for our own development. We can identify specific learning goals, draw on previous experiences, create opportunities to practice, and evaluate whether our activities are helping us achieve those goals.

We don't have to wait for someone else to design a learning experience for us.

As my audience grew, I began making more deliberate decisions about the community I wanted to develop and how I would present myself as Brian Brasil.

What began as an experiment in language learning and social media became an opportunity to establish ongoing relationships with people across Brazil.

Today, more than 55,000 people follow Brian Brasil, and I livestream nearly every day. I speak with people from different regions of Brazil, each bringing their own accents, vocabulary, cultural references, and ways of expressing themselves.

And my Portuguese?

It has improved phenomenally.

I now feel fully fluent, whether I'm chatting casually with friends or speaking professionally to a large group of people. My confidence comes from having practiced the language consistently in conversations with people who use Portuguese every day.

I created an environment where speaking Portuguese became a regular part of my life, even though I was living in the United States.

When I look back at how I developed Brian Brasil, I can identify the knowledge and experiences I deliberately drew upon.

My friendships in Newark taught me the value of learning languages through personal interaction. My interest in languages motivated me to seek new opportunities to practice Portuguese. My experience creating videos gave me a foundation for producing content. My interest in technology encouraged me to explore how TikTok's algorithm could connect me with people in Brazil.

And my background in adult education helped me recognize that I could design a learning experience around my own goals.

Each of those experiences contributed something valuable. But it was my decision to combine what I'd learned from them that made the experiment possible.

And that brings me back to the glassblower.

The artist doesn't simply gather pieces of glass and hope they become something beautiful. The artist selects the materials, applies heat to fuse them, and uses knowledge, skill, and creativity to shape the molten glass into a finished work.

The process involves deliberate decisions. The artist determines which materials to use, how to combine them, and what form the finished work should take.

There may be unexpected results during the process, but the artist remains actively involved in shaping the final creation.

I believe lifelong learning works much the same way.

In Co-Active coaching, we believe that people are naturally creative, resourceful, and whole.

I've always been particularly interested in that last word. Whole.

We bring our accumulated knowledge, skills, interests, and experiences to every new learning opportunity. When we decide to learn something, we don't begin without resources. We already possess knowledge and abilities that can support our development.

We can examine those resources, identify how they relate to our goals, and deliberately combine them with new learning experiences.

Brian Brasil didn't happen by accident. I identified two things I wanted to learn, considered what I already knew about language learning and content creation, and designed an activity that would allow me to pursue both goals simultaneously.

The results have exceeded what I originally imagined, and I continue to develop both my Portuguese and my understanding of social media through the community I've created.

That's what excites me about lifelong learning. We can take an active role in our own development, drawing on the knowledge and experiences we've accumulated to create new opportunities for ourselves.

What knowledge, skills, and experiences could you deliberately combine to create your next learning opportunity?

Eagle Scout projects, returning to my roots, blaze path to opportunity

The Eagle Scout curriculum offers and amazing array of self-led learning experiences that, when meshed together in the imagination of an innovative scout, can prepare him for limitless opportunity.

As an adult, this curriculum is no less valid. In fact, perhaps it is more so. There is no one looking over my adult shoulder, for example, to keep me on track toward the goals I want to pursue. There is no one that, at the end of it all, is going to say I did a satisfactory job or not. The proof is in the pudding, as they say.

Still, in ticking off each small task that is part of the three or so merit badge projects I'm working on at the moment, I'm constantly coming up with new ideas of how to put my newly acquired knowledge into practice. Beyond what I'm doing at the moment as a means to complete the list of must-dos in a finite booklet, I'm finding limitless the ways I can make an impact in my home, my community and in my world.

Recently I decided to abandon city life - a life I've known for the better part of 25 years - to return to a life that's, geographically at least, closer to my roots. My formative years were shared among what, as a child, I considered to be four very different communities. These communities were each more than an hour's drive from each other, and because my parents were divorced, I was constantly being shuttled between some concoction of two of the four.

These communities were Orange, in the Virginia Piedmont, Stephens City, in the Shenandoah Valley, Hanover, in South Central Pennsylvania and Olney, a suburb of Rockville in the DC Metro, a.k.a. the DMV.

Since I returned to live in the District of Columbia a year ago, I've been out exploring each of the four communities of my youth. Before coming back, I'd always remembered these communities as prisons of torment to an angst-filled teen. But in fact, there is great beauty in each of them, and the forests and trails that surround them have given me a new perspective I had not originally held.

I brought with me my adult perspective as well as my reborn love of the outdoors. And because of that, ideas that have been brewing in my mind over the past five years, since my 2010 transformation are bubbling to the surface and beginning to take shape.

Now I'm returning to a rural life, at the foot of the mountains, here in the southern end of Megalopolis. Being self-employed was a goal of mine five years ago. As such, I've been making calculated career moves for the past five years while continuing to increase my outdoors and leadership skills. And the projects I've been working on in pursuit of Eagle Scout merit badge completion have prepared me to launch new endeavors in areas I'd not originally dreamed possible.

So what's next for me? I guess like me you'll have to turn the page to the next chapter to find out.


ABOUT Man of Merit: This is a project I started to help me overcome post-traumatic stress disorder. I was diagnosed with PTSD some years after 9/11, when my weight had ballooned some 200 pounds and I was struggling to keep employment due to bouts with anxiety, depression and impending physical disability. Impacted greatly by a brief stint with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy while living in Philadelphia, the birthplace of positive psychology, I underwent a weight-loss transformation. Subsequently, I began to pursue goals I'd left behind when I quit Boy Scouts at 15. I was entering adolescence without a strong male figure at home to guide me as I figured out what kind of man I wanted to become.

As springtime warms, hiking heats up in the Appalachian Mountains

by Brian Schwarz

It's been nearly two months since I've checked in here on Man of Merit blog, but a lot's been going on in my preparations for summertime camping and backpacking. I've been obtaining new skills I'll count on as I delve into wilderness survival and emergency preparedness, too.

Brian on top of Old Rag Mountain, April 2, 2015, at 330 lbs.

Old Rag Mountain

In April, warm and sunny weather broke through the cold grey winter. I was able to get in some big hikes, one out of every three days. The first hig hike of spring was Shenandoah's Old Rag Mountain on April 2.

This winter was pretty rough on me and my fit life journey; I'd gained five pounds from a combination of unhealthy eating and lack of exercise, so when I took on Old Rag I was weighing in at a beefy 335 pounds. Try not to laugh when imagining me heaving and hauling my deluxe-sized body over walls of boulders and squeezing through ascending and descending crevices. Encouraged by such an auspicious start as summiting the DMV's biggest, baddest (and perhaps baldest) Blue Ridge outlier, I'd hiked 10 pounds off by the end of the month.

A guy from work named Tom, who's in training to hike Mount McKinley this summer, hiked Old Rag with me. Rucking with 50 pounds on his back, Tom got a kick at how I handled my own 20-pound pack while at the same time grunting and groaning as I made my way precariously over, under and through the rock formations for two miles at the top.

Just prior to reaching the Old Rag rock scramble that day, Tom and I ran into a dude who been shopping at our store the day before - Abdiel. As it turns out, Abdiel would end up joining our little HTO hiking crew, too. As a result, the two of them would become avid hiking partners for as long as I could keep up with them; We ended up doing several high points in the Massanutten Mountain Range and elsewhere in the Appalachians before the month was out.

Abdiel and Tom on Massanutten's Buzzard Rock, overlooking Fort Valley

Signal Knob and Maneka Peak

Signal Knob and Maneka Peak was the first big Massanutten hike I did with Tom. About 100 yards from the Signal Knob overlook, there's a tower for Virginia public television. You'd think this would detract from the views, but its existence in no way takes away from the experience.

After spending a while panning the landscape at the Signal Knob overlook, a couple walked up who had a lot of knowledge about some of the topography you could see from here. I was able to gain connections from the geography I'd learned while living in the area for five years in the 1980s. The couple pointed out in the distance a series of small outliers from Great North Mountain.

One of these outliers rises up from the valley floor just west of the city of Winchester; It's called Apple Pie Ridge. This ridge, I remembered, is where I'd gone to the Ridge Campus of my high school for marching band practice. And it was during those many intensive band practices that I'd built up the base for my "hiking calves", marching in cadence and formations all while playing a saxophone at my core.

Hiking north, down from Kennedy Peak, overlooking Shenandoah Valley

High Peak and Massanutten Ridge

On a foggy and drizzly day, Abdiel and I hiked to High Peak along the Tuscarora and Massanutten trails. We heard more than 70 gunshots in Shenandoah's south valley that day, and I'm pretty sure we'd agree that we heard a bear rifling around near a newly rerouted section of the Tuscarora Trail, below Shawl Gap. There was a cool bear's den sort of outcropping along the trail. Maybe we were passing by its home and it was watching from a distance. In any event, we kept moving along.

Kennedy Peak and Edith Gap

It was a super sunny day when I hiked Kennedy Peak with Tom. The views from the Kennedy Peak tower are some of the best I've seen in the region. At the summit, Tom surprised me with a fish taco - simply a small flour tortilla filled with grilled asparagus and striped bass meat. But the meat was from a fish he'd caught only the day before at the confluence of the Potomac River approaching the Chesapeake Bay, so as we looked east from the summit tower, across the Shenandoah Valley and toward the Blue Ridge in the distance, this down-home Virginia-caught bass tasted especially good.

Buzzard Rock

Even after experiencing the overlook at Signal Knob and the high tower at Kennedy Peak, a much easier hike that I did with both Tom and Abdiel sticks in my mind most for the incredible vistas from its namesake rock. I say the vistas were incredible, but I honestly lost words at the moment I saw the view of Fort Valley and western ridges of the expansive northern Massanutten Mountain Range. Lost. Words. I possibly even gasped.

Buzzard Rock is the huge slab of rock that you see hanging high on the ridge to your left as you enter Fort Valley and the Elizabeth Furnace section of Washington National Forest from the north along Passage Creek. The day we hiked to Buzzard Rock, there was a group camp set up just down from ridge. We stopped and chatted with one of the group for a while, who told us he was a guide with a therapy outing. Some teen guys were being "straightened out" through leadership and trust exercises while rock climbing, or some such.

Next Steps

My hiking has slowed a bit in May, and it's been by choice - I felt for the first week at least I needed to recover. I'll be heading out on a big hike tomorrow, though. Tom and Abdiel are doing 13 miles at Crabtree Falls. I'd go with them but Tom leaves soon for a three-week expedition at Denali National Park, so I think he may want to go harder than I'll be able to handle. Instead, I think I'm going to opt for something shorter, around between seven and 10 miles, maybe in West Virginia.

So when am I going to start backpacking? I've taken four days off around my birthday weekend, so this is probably when it will happen. I still need to buy a backpack, which is a pretty big deal. It's going to cost me around $200, and it's a really big decision as to which one to buy. I need to do it soon, though. Meanwhile, I am planning to do some car camping in conjunction with big day hikes at wilderness areas around Charlottesville and Roanoke. But backpacking will happen soon. Stay tuned to see my progress!

Follow Brian's adventures on Instagram @fitlifechronicles. Check out his splash page at about.me/brian.schwarz.

Learning Boy Scouts outdoor and survival skills - not just for the young!

by Brian Schwarz

Time to get back to the blog Man of Merit, where I'm working toward the requirements of Boy Scouts merit badges. Who says you have to become an Eagle Scout before you turn 18 - it may take me a lifetime, but I think it's a worthwhile pursuit, so I'll keep at it as long as I need to, or as long as I can.

Ready for warmer weather? Hikes this winter were infrequent and short!

I've pretty much nailed Hiking and am well into several other merit badges, thanks to becoming an expert day hiker and hike leader with several regional trail organizations in 2014. This year, 2015, is all about continuing my skills improvement, migrating some of my fun from land to water and learning the basics Kayaking and stand-up paddleboarding, known as SUP.

Camping will take a primary role whenever I'm able to link two days off in a row. When I'm able to get three or more days off, I will be venturing into Backpacking.

You should see the drafts I've written this winter about how I was going to brave the weather tomorrow and head out on the trail. Always "tomorrow", but tomorrow would almost always cut my planned five miler down to a pitiful mile, if I the weather was forgiving enough for me to be able to get out and get active at all.

I've overcome many of my weaknesses over the years, and as tempting it is to give up on becoming an all-weather hiker and just move south to a warmer climate - maybe Southern California or North Carolina, or perhaps Ecuador or the Mediterranean even - I am committed to life in the Northeast Megalopolis and will try better next winter.

For now, though, it's spring! And today's hike will be in the mid-70s with only a slight chance of a brief thundershower in the afternoon.

Today, I'm off to test a new pair of trail shoes I got yesterday - Altra's The Lone Peak 2.0. I'm used to hiking with much more stiffness and support, so before I head out with them for the 12-mile hike I'm leading on Sunday I thought I'd test them out on about five miles of rocky terrain this afternoon. The reviews online lead me to believe I'm going to love their performance, and I've got to say I'm already in love with the wider toe box and moderately cushioned soles.

The choice to live life as a Man of Merit is made moment by moment.

Subscribe to my blog if you agree that more of us should be focused on outdoor and survival skills building, no matter the stage of life. Until there are more curricula geared toward the middle age set, the Boy Scouts curriculum - with a few adaptations here and there - suits me just fine!

On Becoming a Sierra Club Regional Outings Leader

Today I led my first mentored hike as a provisional leader of the Sierra Club Potomac Regional Outings group. A few weeks ago I attended a retreat at the Bear's Den Hostel, located along the Appalachian Trail in Northern Virginia, on a ridgeline overlooking the Shenandoah Valley, where after two days I was certified in basic first aid and had completed a multi-module wilderness leadership training course. Today's hike was half of the next phase in the process of becoming a sanctioned leader of the club, and despite a rocky start I would say it was a resounding success.

Sierra Club Virginia Chapter SCPRO 2014 Leadership Retreat at Bear's Den
Photo by Ellen Hill, SCPRO

The hostel where the retreat was held is maintained by another organization I'm a member of - the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club. Just last month I completed the training process to join the PATC Trail Patrol. As it turns out, several of the mentors and trainers at the SCPRO event were also PATC members, so it felt like family - a new family I've been adapting myself into since I moved back to the region in July of this year.

One of the best elements of the weekend retreat was an evening bonding session with my fellow classmates, instructors and mentors. This was when much of the sense of "family" began to take root for me. Also, as our new SCPRO Class of 2014 peer group was forming, we made a few jaunts out to a nearby rocky overlook along the Appalachian Trail - at night, in the morning and at noon - to stretch our legs. This was a time to shift the energy to a more intimate level, to get to know folks a little more deeply.

SCPRO Leadership Class of 2014 ( with organizer Liz Guertin on the right)

I came away from the whole retreat experience knowing more about my fellow humans as we were there, growing alongside each other; I left excited to begin the next step in the outings leader training program - my two mentored hikes. So today as I was signing in some 15 attendees, you can imagine how wonderful it made me feel to see one of the old class coming along on the first real-world test of my ability to apply our new leadership skills.

The hike was titled, Hike Through History: Rock Creek Park. Here's what I had to say about it in the MeetUp write-up:

One of the country’s first national parks, Rock Creek Park is home to a rich history that often remains hidden from residents and visitors alike. On this hike, we’ll discover some of this hidden history – as revealed in the recently published “History of Rock Creek Park”, by Scott Einberger. Entering the park from Connecticut Avenue via the Melvin Hazen Trail, we’ll first traverse the southern bluffs section of the park, exploring the fall zone via the Western Ridge and Valley Trails. Here we’ll learn about a skinny-dipping president and the naming of Boulder Bridge, pre-Colonial quartz mining, the mills of the valley and other bits of Rock Creek trivia. Eventually, we’ll make our way up to Fort DeRussy via the horse trails, where we’ll talk about the fort’s critical role in the Civil War Battle of Fort Stevens.

This is a moderate hike of about 7.5 miles. The route has several ups-and-downs, and there’s also a bit of an optional rock scramble.

I recommend that folks each carry 2 liters of water; Bring along trail snacks and lunch, which we’ll eat somewhere along the way. A bathroom break/pit stop will be made at the Nature Center.

In hindsight, I would have added a few more qualifying statements, such as "there will be several stream crossings, one made more difficult due my poor route choice, the result of my failure to scout the hike in both directions." But everyone made it from Cleveland Park Metro through the national park and back again without losing a limb and with a smile on their collective face, so I'd say I achieved my overall goal while experiencing some real learning-in-action.

With "The 2 Anns", along the AT Bear's Den Rocks during SCPRO retreat

Having led more than 60 group hikes in the mid-Atlantic over the past two years, I was confident I could achieve my goals. I'm glad I'll have the chance to apply what I learned today on my next hike, coming up in December.

By the way, I didn't take any photos of today's hike, because I asked at the beginning if anyone minded being in group photos snapped along the way that might be posted on my blogs or social media domains I manage, and one person raised their hand. My hikes are all about inclusion, so I certainly didn't want to be someone managing an exclusionary process when I needed to focus on - as a host - making sure everyone felt they were part of an experience worthwhile.

My next hike will be December 20, time and place to be determined. Check out SCPRO on MeetUp and Hiking Megalopolis on Facebook for more info.

From the PATC to the Sierra Club - for me it's about leadership

by Brian Schwarz

I'm looking forward to improving my outdoor skills this weekend, taking a class that leads to becoming a Sierra Club Outings Leader. Part mountain survival, part Leave No Trace, part leadership, the class is set at a hostel out on the eastern edge of the Appalachian's central valley in Northern Virginia, at a spot where some of the lowest mountains of the Appalachian Range rise to lift the AT off the floor of the Shenandoah Valley.

From the PATC to the Sierra Club - it's all about becoming a better leader

As a kid, I backpacked and camped somewhere in those eastern valley hills, though I believe it was a little further south of where I'll be hostel-crashing this weekend. It was sometime around my transition to Boy Scouts when I was here before. I was a pre-teen, or really I guess I was transitioning, becoming a teen. I just remember being confused about the experience of camping and couldn't really focus on whatever it was that I was supposed to be getting out of the whole thing.

The feeling? Awkward. I hadn't been in school long enough to make friends, so I just developed a crush on my patrol leader and did anything he asked me to do, with enthusiasm. I made it through. But I ended up with chaffing in very uncomfortable spots because I wasn't that great at managing personal hygiene in a simulated wilderness environment. We slept in wet tents down by the creek, at a clearing in the woods, with a field nearby for capture the flag, somewhere with no bathrooms, just a swell in the creek big enough for group bathing.

I had no idea over time it would prove to be one of the most significant of my personal experiences growing up in terms of providing a richness, texture and framework to my life that always brings me back to concepts I learned in scouting.

Hence, the blog Man of Merit where I am trying to go back and finish all the merit badges I'd not been able to complete when I was that confused transitioning teen; I'm working to fill in the gaps as I explore the art of living in the great outdoors. First the PATC Trail Patrol Training. Now this.

I feel like I finally get it. Now I'm ready to camp.