Let me tell you, sculpting sand for four hours is very therapeutic. And it allows your inner child to come forward in a way that we don’t often experience in our busy, day-to-day lives. Some of my favorite memories:

The moment we realized that we had drawn the perimeter in reverse (west facing east, east facing west) and everyone said, “Let’s just do it this way.” A fine example of creative collaboration in the face of the unexpected.

Being hoisted out of the water and over the rim after spending several hours sculpting the inside of the crater. I knew I would have to find my way out eventually, but hadn’t given it much thought. I had faith that the way would become clear in time.

Watching Michael and Dave create drippy trees with such intense and quiet focus you could hear a pin drop… if it wasn’t for the sound of the waves crashing on the beach.

I was intrigued to see how each of us gravitated toward tasks that allowed us to “play” in a way that best expressed the artist within. It’s amazing to see what emerges when you place adults in the company of sand and water. Magic.

I also wondered how shared leadership would work with other members of the team we had invited to play with us (at The Canoe Group, we operate our business utilizing shared leadership).
As I reflect back on the day, the most memorable example of our perfectionist tendencies occurred right from the start of our day. We decided to carve a grid (with tape measure in hand) in our 21 x 21 sand plot to coincide with our gridded model of Crater Lake on paper. Our sand sculpture of Crater Lake had to be created to scale!

Watching Dave carve out the perimeter to match our gridded site map reminded me of one of the activities that was commonly found on restaurant placemats when I was growing up. Good memories.

As Marta points out, we worked together as a team on certain aspects of the build and settled into our own unique roles/tasks in an almost entirely organic process as the day progressed.

Everyone found something they wanted to do from the tasks at hand and approached their work with great purpose. This seems like such a simple statement or way of being, but our experience reminded me of how infrequently this happens in day-to-day work.