Dwight, Thanks for a wonderful insight into caves and caving. I’ve used similar technique related to leading new caver cave trips for a number of years. I’ve found that many beginners are suffering from sensory overload in their first cave and are more concerned with not getting hurt or touching the wrong thing, and following in the leaders footsteps so they can’t get lost, and what if there are snakes, or . . . They sometimes forget the wonder of caves or the ability to explore. I will usually lead them into the cave while they get their cave legs under them and after a little while, send them down a passage first, some stop and question whether they’re “allowed” to explore, “is it safe”, etc. but once given permission, they take off and then you get them hooked.
Thanks Dwight, I’ll post some insights into grotto life a little later. I’ve been a member of a number of different grottos, from Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee and now Texas and seen some interesting dynamics. I will say that some caving organizations are much easier to join and become a part of than others. Leadership is key and why you need to give some thought to the election of the grotto leaders. Geary Schindel gschin...@edwardsaquifer.org<mailto:gschin...@edwardsaquifer.org> From: Dwight [mailto:dirt...@comcast.net] Sent: Wednesday, July 5, 2017 11:16 PM To: Geary Schindel <gschin...@edwardsaquifer.org> Cc: Cave NM <swrcav...@googlegroups.com>; Cave Texas <Texascavers@texascavers.com>; TAG Net <tag-...@hiddenworld.net> Subject: The future of NSS membership The future of NSS membership There have been a series of really thoughtful comments in the blog on SW Cavers about our membership, its growth, and the future. The most thoughtful and productive so far is the recent one from Geary Schindel (see below). I am in the middle of several time-consuming tasks, but want to throw my two cents into the arena with the intent of contributing more, later. The Society and the fellowship of other cavers has clearly been important to me for most of my life. But my caving did not start out that way. 1. Historically the NSS has taken the attitude of not advertising or encouraging non-cavers, as has already been discussed well by others. Is it time to change? Were you once a non-caver? Did you have an interest in caves before meeting NSS cavers? 2. In my personal experience young cavers were most easily recruited by Student Grottoes. I was both a member and faculty sponsor of several. The lure of adventure and discovery was usually secondary after the drive to meet potential girl- or boy-friends. I remember that at "Club Night" in the fall we deliberately selected and appropriately costumed the best looking girls to talk to the freshman guys and the hunks to talk to the girls. An interest in cave exploration (or cave science) mostly grew with the accumulation of the experiences of discovery, more than "adventure". (As far as item 1 above, I think in the earlier days it was the "adventure" part that we were trying NOT to encourage. I don't think that has changed.) There are several grottoes that made a transition from Student to Community (Regular) grottoes. Sandia comes to mind but that happened while I was gone (about 30 years) from Albuquerque. Was that a pivotal time when the ageing of the grotto began? There are some grottoes who continue to have a good younger membership. San Antonio (Bexar Grotto). I was impressed at the last few Texas regional gatherings that I attended by the presence of a fair number of younger members, but I have no idea of their stories. Geary describes some of the reasons. 3. I have led a lot of "beginner" trips over the years. For initial, non-vertical, trips I found a good way to foster a fascination in exploration and discovery was to lead from behind once I felt that they had a general competence in their equipment and common sense. I used Ft. Stanton cave for that purpose a number of times. It was there I discovered the enthusiasm fostered by monitoring, from the rear where possible, of the group of neophytes working their way through easy but challenging passages such as Crystal Crawl and even Hellhole. I can't recall specific instances, but from that group in the 60s came some of our established leaders today - Harvey DuChene, John Corcoran, Robbie Babb, Jim Hardy, Carol Carmine (now Belski), and a number of others who discovered something about caves and themselves that interested them. Send your new folks ahead into somewhere you know is not dangerous but will lead to an attractive surprise. Let them discover for themselves. The Oh Wow! factor. Not just some "pretty little room" where the struggle is to turn around and agree that yes, it was pretty little. There never will be an agreement on how far to go "advertising" caving as an activity. I have seen the NSS grow from a fairly small number of groups each with only a few people with a shared focus (and not-so shared, beyond something vaguely related to "caves") to a large and occasionally unwieldy organization with more than 10,000 members. Our founders have matured and died. Our individual and societal wealth has grown. Our individual interests and focus has changed. Who, in the 50s and 60s, realistically thought the NSS itself would actually OWN caves? Society has changed and people-pressure has been put on wilderness, both above and below ground. Out west we now have to plan ahead and get permits to go into a cave on public lands, not just decide Friday night where to go caving on Saturday. The hardest core who have discovered the lure of virgin cave continue charging onward, usually surmounting significant physical and personal hardships. But the rest? The "average" caver? How did they first get interested and why have they stayed involved? Does your own story offer lessons for others in the future? Myself? Not sure it helps in this day and age. I was an enthusiastic beginning caver with a college outing club in upstate New York. I was already an outdoorsman and explorer of the woods, mountains, lakes, and rivers. Caving seemed like a logical extension. Girls? Yes, well sort of. Still a freshman, they were a secondary lure to the outing club but girls did not go on our caving trips. I was at an all-male school (well, 4,000 guys and 3 women undergrads). We met the girls mostly on the square dance outings, clearly separate from caving adventures. One Saturday I drove past some dirty people at the side of a rural road with an out-of-state license plate. Recognizing they must have just come out a cave that I knew about, I went back and started talking with them. As I was starting to drive off, a big ol' boy came up and handed me a slip of paper. Months later I sent it in as it was an NSS membership application. The big ol' boy had signed it (in those days you had to be endorsed by an NSS member). His name was Russ Gurnee and his name meant absolutely nothing to me. (Russ had a personal objective of recruiting individuals who were already exploring caves and carried NSS membership applications with him for that purpose.) As it turned out, I really had nothing to do with the NSS except read the NEWS for the next 4 years. My initial interest in the Society was a curiosity about what else was out there in the bigger caving world and the NEWS seemed like a good place to start. I did do a lot of caving along with numerous other outdoor pursuits, mostly with Outing Club friends although some from Virginia and Pennsylvania also happened to be NSS members. I did not need the NSS to find caves or caving companions. I did not go to NSS meetings. That changed after I went to my first NSS convention - Carlsbad 1960, where I discovered the "family" that shared mutual interests. By then I was already a seasoned caver and had started to map Jewel Cave in South Dakota. At Carlsbad Will White encouraged my interest in the geology of caves on a Nittany Grotto mapping trip in the Guadalupe's and I was invited to come to Flint Ridge later that summer. So I guess I was recruited into the NSS in the traditionally most ideal manner. Unfortunately, although that model will still collect a few unusual individuals, it won't easily grow a stagnating, ageing Society in 2018. This is a good discussion. I look forward to it continuing. Perhaps we should shift it to a larger forum that reaches more of the Society? Geary; where do you suggest we go from here? Dwight Deal ________________________________ From: "Geary Schindel" <gschin...@edwardsaquifer.org<mailto:gschin...@edwardsaquifer.org>> To: swrcav...@googlegroups.com<mailto:swrcav...@googlegroups.com> Cc: "Geary Schindel" <gschin...@edwardsaquifer.org<mailto:gschin...@edwardsaquifer.org>> Sent: Wednesday, July 5, 2017 10:25:31 AM Subject: [SWR CAVERS] Young NSS cavers Folks, There have been some excellent posts in the swcavers group on membership issues in the NSS. As the incoming president, I’ve had discussions with the BOG related to our stagnation in membership as well as some other issues. Over the last two weeks, I’ve been working on forming three ad hoc committees to address some of these issues with the idea that they have a specific charge and time lines. They are: Membership – to address our stagnation in membership numbers and what we can do to reverse the trend. This will be chaired by Kristine Medlen, New NSS Board Member Convention – What can we do to make conventions run smoother, remove some of the steep learning curve on convention staff, and make sure that conventions stay in the black. This will be chaired by Dave Decker, NSS Board Member Education and Museum – As was announced at the convention, we received a very generous donation from a member to establish a museum and educational center/program. This will be chaired by Pat Seiser, former NSS Board Member and former Chair of the Directorate. The propose of the committees is to study the issues before them, develop some recommendations along with timelines for implementation and expected budgets and resources necessary to get the job done. These are difficult tasks, we are hoping to have a short white paper related to the issues in time for the fall board meeting. Regarding recruitment of cavers for the NSS, here are a couple of observations I’ve made over the years across the eastern and central US. I’ve noted a change in attitudes from the 70’s when cavers were a secretive group to now, maybe being a little more apparent in the eyes of the public. Still, it is rare to see a well written article or coverage on caving in the popular or outdoor oriented press – unlike in Europe. In the 70’s, there were concerns that people would overrun our limited caving resources. Carbide was still being used and there were lots of flashlight caving going on. The attitude was to try and get some of the flashlight cavers to come into the folds of the NSS but not to encourage others to join. Finding a caving club was tough and many of them didn’t encourage new members. In the late 70’s, I was working in an outdoor store in the D.C. area and had lots of interactions with folks that climbed, hiked, backpacked, cross country skied, etc – basically the group where many of our members came from. I would mention that I caved and climbed and rarely did I get a response that people were interested. Even among the outdoor crowd, there weren’t that many people jumping at the chance to crawl into a hole in the ground. Today, we see a stagnation and even decline in membership in the NSS. Some of this is related to curtailment of access to caves because of WNS, some of it is related to changes in interests of young folks, some is that fact that we are not super easy to find (but easier than when I joined), and there are more activities that compete with caving. There seems to be lots of reasons for the decline. Hopefully, the ad hoc membership committee will identify the issues and we can make some changes to get more active cavers to join and to identify individuals that can make a contribution to organized caving. This leads to another issue, should we actively recruit folks to join the NSS. This is currently done by many members on a one on one basis but as an organization, the NSS has not. We are interested in protecting cave and karst resources but people only support and protect what they know about and understand. Therefore, even if you have people that will not end up becoming long term cavers, having them experience, and knowledgeable about caves and karst is very positive. For example, the City of San Antonio with two million people that rely on the Edwards Aquifer for water, has passed a voter approved $100 million bond issue every five years for the last 15 years. This program is set up to purchase conservation easements over the aquifer’s recharge zone. You can see video and public outreach pieces on how the aquifer works, about sinkholes and caves on the recharge area, and visit local museums that have exhibits on the Edwards. We also have a number of commercial caves in the area that are popular. However, two million people aren’t wanting to go caving but they are willing to support conserving the recharge zone, which includes lots of caves with their tax money. We’ve now purchased conservation easements on over 150,000 acres of land and have 100 million dollars in bond money to purchase another 50,000 acres over the next five years. These properties contain over 125 known caves which are now protected a significant portion of the recharge zone of the aquifer. The Bexar Grotto, which I’m a member of in San Antonio (TX), has been bucking the trend in declining membership. We’ve had to move to a larger meeting room in the last two years. What have we done differently: We’re on the Meet Up Groups web page in San Antonio and we are getting one or two visitors each meeting (we meet twice a month). We’ve had good grotto leadership over the last 18 years I’ve been in the grotto. We have some excellent programs on a wide range of subjects during many of our meetings. We could do a better job announcing the programs but we have good attendance at the meetings and people seem to enjoy them. We try and get new cavers into a cave within a week or two of visiting the grotto. This isn’t necessarily a formal policy but seems to be working as we have an easily accessible cave here in town. We make sure that folks feel welcome and invite them to “after the meeting” meetings to socialize. The Bexar Grotto is one of the most civic minded grottos I’ve ever been involved in. The group is always working on some project supporting Texas Cave Management Association, the Texas Hydro Geo Workshop, the Bamberger Foundation Ranch, Bracken Bat Cave, and assisting land owners in evaluating their cave resources. We have some members that will tell you they are not “hard core” cavers but they love to help on various projects and enjoy the social scene and visiting caves. They are actually the backbone of the grotto. What do we need to do better. Maybe assigning a mentor to each new person that comes to the grotto. We could do a better job promoting the NSS (that’s my job), and we can get people underground. We could all get more efficient at running grotto meetings, etc. Anyway, a few thoughts on the subject. I would be interested in your comments. Geary Schindel NSS President gschin...@edwardsaquifer.org<mailto:gschin...@edwardsaquifer.org> -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Southwestern Cavers of the National Speleological Society" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to swrcavers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com<mailto:swrcavers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com>. To post to this group, send email to swrcav...@googlegroups.com<mailto:swrcav...@googlegroups.com>. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/swrcavers. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/swrcavers/CY4PR05MB2805EBAA184FE9933A84BDB5D4D40%40CY4PR05MB2805.namprd05.prod.outlook.com<https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/swrcavers/CY4PR05MB2805EBAA184FE9933A84BDB5D4D40%40CY4PR05MB2805.namprd05.prod.outlook.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
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