cc: file, Grandma Hafen via Tony Hafen, Pauline Nelson via mail, Sara and Des Penny, Claude and Katherine Warner, Lloyd and Luana Warner. and Diane Cluff.
"Rob and I left for Philmont Scout Ranch from the church on Wednesday morning the 23rd of June. The Monday and Tuesday after my last Thoughtlet were pretty normal, just trying to close a lot of loops prior to leaving for a couple of weeks. It seems like there is always a need to give several people power-of-attorney, or the right to act for me, when I am absent. As a specific example, Steve Slawson agreed to follow-up with Wes Curtis at Southern Utah University about the Rural Development Conference in Cedar City the week after Labor Day. Also, Rhonda is going to follow-up on making sure the Lexus is being fixed.
Wednesday started out seeming normal. Rob and I got to the church on time. Andrea drove us and Gary and Roetta Jones and their two sons to Hobby Airport in their van (Sister Jones is still not feeling very well from her bone marrow transplant and so she just rode with us). We caught our SouthWest flight to Albequerque. The bus was waiting for us when we got our backpacks from baggage and were ready to leave the airport. The bus ride was with two chairs each, and a TV overhead on which was played the movie `Cool Running,' about the Jamacian Bob Sled Team at the Calgary Winter Olympics a few years ago. The trip was so much nicer than the previous two drives to Philmont and to other scout camps in the Rocky Mountains. Roice, Ben, and Paul, do you remember all of the car problems we had on those trips? Remember how we rented a brand new van, and then had the engine blow a rod and have to be towed into Amarillo late at night. There wasn't room for us in the two truck, and so we were all sitting in our seats in the van, I was in the driver's seat and Alan Peterson was in the passenger seat, we were being pulled backwards by the tow truck, and I am sure it was agains't numerous safety rules of both the Boy Scouts and the church. I remember a car pulling up too close to the front of the van, tailgating, turning to Alan, saying do you want to see something funny, and pulling the light switch on so it shined directly in their eyes as if a car were coming directly for them. It was funny, and as I think of the danger and the liability and the power-of-attorney I had been given as a leader, it scares me how easy it is to make foolish mistakes. Thankfully nothing else bad happened.
I read most of the way. It was my first Tony Hillerman novel. Dad read a lot of these novels in the years before he died, and I put his collection up at the Nelson cabin after he died. I actually finished `A Thief of Time' before we left on the trail. It was about people who were digging up Anasazi burial mounds and selling the pots for $5-50,000. It certainly brought to mind the cold winter day in St. George, when I was about 13, and when Uncle Glenn and I went out to the farm in St. George and while digging on one of the mesa's found a half a dozen complete pots and a set of ceremonial arrowheads. I still have two of the pots and the portion of the arrowheads Uncle Glenn did not keep (http://www.walden3d.com/photos/Arrowhead.jpg). I remember he sort of let me choose which of the pots and which of the arrowheads I kept because I found the first one, still talking me into letting him keep those he was most interested in. Being about 14 years older, it was one of my early experiences in how age creates an implicit power-of-attorney. I remember seeing the red painted pots Uncle Glenn kept from that find several years later in a motel on the St. George Boulevard.
When we got to Philmont there was a message to return an emergency phone call from Andrea. So I did. Turns out Paul needed my signiture on some papers for his condominium in Provo. Since I was going to be unavailable for a couple of weeks, he wanted me to sign over a power-of-attorney so he could sign my name on the forms. The message said he had faxed a power-of-attorney form to Philmont. It took me until 4:00 PM the next day to track down the form, sign it, and fax it back to him. During that time we checked in, did our medical check, got our crew gear, and ate a few meals at the cafeteria. I got thinking about not helping Roice or Ben or Melanie buy a condominium for their school, and my mind went back to my entrepreneurship courses at SMU, and how the professor said (as I quoted in ../9720.html and ../9816.html): `If you were really entrepreneurs you would not be in this class, you would be out there starting a business.' Maybe Paul is the first serious entrepreneur of the next generation?
The concept of power-of-attorney came up a few days later, when we got into Beaubien Camp. We hiked a long ways in, worked conservation, and then did a side hike to the airplane that crashed in the 1940's on the first day in camp. I was wiped out the second day, and so I did not go with the guys down to brand hats, shoes, etc. I delegated the job to a friend, in effect giving him my power-of-attorney to brand my shoes. He had put the two Philmont brands on the heals of his shoes on a previous Philmont trek. It never crossed my mind he would do something different with my shoes. He did! He put the two brands on the toes of my new hiking boots. I was disappointed because every step I take in those boots, when I am looking down, I will remember not being specific when I delegated to him. Yet I realized realized I had given my friend the power to act for me, and so there was nothing to say about his choice (or maybe it was his kid's choice) about where the brands were placed on my boots. I consider this an important lesson in delegation, and hope you will each realize this is a particularly important lesson when giving someone else the legal right to represent you in any kind of transaction.
I hope you are each always careful when you provide power-of-attorney to someone else to act in your name. Think through the consequences, even more carefully than when you make a choice yourself, and you will minimize disappointment.
On two different subjects, I have a brief note in closing. First Melanie and I talked earlier in the week and she asked why I was going to write three Thoughtlet's instead of just one. The answer is (1) I am keeping the numbering consistent relative to the number of weeks in a year, (2) these Thoughtlets act as a weekly diary for me, and (3) taking a few minutes to review the events of each week helps me learn so I make better choices in the future, as well as helping me enjoy the good times an extra time. Second, Melanie stressed she wants to go to Utah with us at Labor Day when we go out to the Adolph Hafen reunion. She also wants Sara and Rob to meet Roice and Paul there. And she thinks it would be really neat if Ben and Sarah could join us, since Audrey will be out there for school, and Rachel and Matt are going to be going out also. So would everyone that reads this let me know if you are interested in us getting tickets for you. If I don't hear from you, I will call and talk to you about this. In other words, I am not trusting the Thoughtlet to get the word to you, not trusting this media to be my power-of-attorney. I hope these words prove to be a valuable lesson for each of you."
