by Coke Newell, Founder and President, Edaphica, LLC
It was early June more than fifteen years ago and I was steering a canoe down the Cache la Poudre River in the northern Colorado Rockies. The river was bursting with pride and delight as it swiftly carried the run-off of deep mountain snows toward the sea. In the canoe with me were my sons, then aged 3 (Aubrey), 7 (Landon) and 9 (Bryce), three of the great joys of my life, and objects of my most determined and anxious efforts as a man on this earth.
Always the conscientious mentor (and nature guide on the side), I was pointing out a mature western grebe as it took flight out of the bushes just ahead of us. I was still watching the bird as we rounded a sharp bend in the river. Responding too late and over-correcting with my paddle, I sent the canoe into a spin and lost all control of the craft.
Suddenly the canoe flipped and out we flew, the four of us tossed into a roiling maelstrom of debris tumbling forward in the grip of an enormous whirlpool not fifty feet away. As I moved downstream I saw my oldest boy crawling out of the river on the far bank and my 7-year-old hanging by his fingernails from the deep bark furrows of a large willow that was extending a limb of mercy out over the river. His eyes were big and his face screamed silently, ‘daddy, help me.'
As I watched, helpless, I slammed into the forked limbs of a toppled tree, t rapped perpendicular to our course and laying fully submerged in the swollen current. With one limb at the level of my chest and the other at my waist, hundreds or perhaps thousands of pounds of rushing water held me as immovable as if I were against a solid wall. In a moment my three-year-old boy hit the upper limb, hanging on for his life. And then the submerged canoe slammed into us both.
My little boy was just a few feet away up the limb but I could not move to help him. The river held us pinned in the vise of its pressure. Aubrey remained conscious, but the color was drained from his face and his lips were quickly turning bluish. He was totally silent, his little fingers gnawing desperately at the dispassionate shroud of the limb.
The canoe shifted slightly in the current, giving me just that brief moment and I reached out for him and tugged him toward me with one arm. Then the canoe shifted again— it was moving down my legs. We were trapped. It became clear to me that if or when the canoe shifted to a point any lower on my legs, the bottom limb crossing my body just above the knees, it would snap them like a pair of twigs, likely leaving me unconscious and doubtless drowning me, life jacket or not. Perhaps both of us.
As the canoe pressed its way into me, I clung to my son, snuggling his body to mine. Then the canoe moved again and the pain of being bent the wrong way started to climb rapidly. It wouldn't take but one more movement.
I thought of my choices: I could just hang on to my boy and hope someone got to us before the canoe and the river did— a desperate daydream. Or I could try to escape the upper limb by pushing us underwater and guiding our bodies out and over the lower limb, then hope the undercurrent detached us from the grip of the boat and, somehow, let us fight our way through the whirlpool.
The greater risk seemed to remain where we were, sinking slowly, inevitably, into the deep with my legs at the point of shattering. My son's eyes were upon me and I could hear what he couldn't say: Daddy, save me.
I spoke to him, trying to beam a shot of courage into his wild and terrorized eyes. Then I pushed up against the limb with my right hand, prayed for the best and sent us under.
We lived.
In the end, I lost only my hat and a large slice of pride. But over the course of the next few weeks I relived the experience a hundred times in desperate, anxious daydreams. My choice— my carelessness at the first point of choice— had almost killed us. In fact, nothing I did to get us free of that submerged canoe (the second point of choice) was inherently intelligent either. We could have just as likely floated from the tree to the vortex of the whirlpool and never come up. The canoe, freed by my movement, could have pinned us again, and almost did.
I had taken a risk— with other people's lives— and got lucky. It wouldn't be worth trying again. It was no game, no exercise, neither gambit nor gamble. It was reckless and irresponsible.
Yet over the course of that same few weeks I also experienced a series of calm and soothingly redemptive night dreams, vivid wanderings through garden paths and desert trails of a world apart. Night after night I tried to expect nothing, thinking “dreams don't do this.” But night after night the journey continued, progressing in both its geography and its tutelage.
I would often awaken in the early hours of morning and, by the light of my bedside alarm clock, scribble notes, feelings, impressions. Each morning, the recollections vivid, I would then write down all I could remember of my night journeys, both the emotion and the lessons. What was unfolding beneath my pen appeared to be a marvelous model for effective, successful parenting. It was a model that soon took the form of a compass. At the cardinal points of the compass, and within the quadrants so defined, I found specific principles— principles I have since discovered to be fundamental principles underlying human learning— that charted the course to what would surely be uncommon success for any parent, mentor or guide.
I've worked with that compass for nearly 15 years now. I have deferred to its guidance in raising seven good children (several of whom are now good adults). I have dissected it through graduate school, compared it to other models, styles and theories, and to practices new and old. I have applied it in training thousands of associates and in leading corporate teams, divisions and councils. For “ease of use,” memorability, applicability, authenticity and most importantly, effectiveness, I have never found its equal.
That Edaphic Leadership Compass ™ now undergirds the philosophies, practices and trade activities of Edaphica, LLC . As a company and as individuals we are dedicated to providing public and private organizations— including corporations and families— with what we sincerely believe to be the best tool in existence for achieving authentic leadership success. 
