Gratitude is most often used as a noun, describing as it does, the feeling of being thankful. This warm and comforting word is often bandied about during the holidays, when we reflect upon all of the things for which we are grateful. But for some of us — and in particular, many of our staff members here at The National Center for Outdoor & Adventure Education (NCOAE) — we treat the word gratitude as a verb.

Great employees often live in gratitude by taking positive action. And that means being present for others, which includes listening to their issues or desires and connecting with them. It also means becoming the person that someone else is grateful for.

Image © Simon Maage (sourced from Unsplash)

Just before the holidays truly got underway, we asked some of our staff members to list just some of the things for which they were most grateful. We’re not the least bit surprised that some of their comments encompassed our students and fellow staffers.

Here’s their take on gratitude, in their own words:

It’s not often that we derive inspiration while standing in the middle of an overcrowded parking lot, but for our co-founder and executive director Zac Adair, it was in just such an unlikely setting that the notion of opening a Pacific Northwest location for NCOAE took hold.

(Image © by Edward Etojakovic via Wikipedia)

This idea came to mind during a recent trip to Oregon, where Zac was checking out the outdoor recreation and education scene. Accompanied by a friend who also works in the human-powered outdoor recreation and adventure education space, the two men found themselves in the parking lot of the historic Timberline Lodge, situated about halfway up the 11,239-foot-high Mount Hood — undoubtedly the most majestic mountain in the state.

Well known for more than a century for its outstanding outdoor recreational possibilities — available year-round and in every outdoor rec category imaginable — the Mount Hood area and the nearby Deschutes River are virtual meccas for wilderness enthusiasts of every outdoor sport persuasion. And as Zac and his friend were to witness in that hotel parking lot on that day last month, diversity is the key when it comes

A North Carolina television news station has run a colorful three-minute segment called “Extraordinary People,” that highlights our very own co-founder and executive director, Zac Adair (video footage from the segment appears at the end of today’s post).

Daniel Seamans, evening anchor correspondent for WWAY TV3, put the cameras on Zac and The National Center for Outdoor & Adventure Education in the Extraordinary Person of the Week portion of the network affiliate’s evening news. WWAY TV3 is the ABC, CBS and CW-affiliated television station in Wilmington, owned by Morris Network, Inc.

Entitled “Blind Ambition,” the veteran correspondent interviewed Zac as well as a half-dozen students in our Education Without Walls (EWW) program, NCOAE’s year-round adventure education program for highly motivated and ambitious youth who have significant financial needs.

The news station called the segment ‘Blind Ambition” because Zac lost the majority of his sight when the bicycle he was riding was struck by a car back in 2003. The accident did little to slow this veteran surfer, whitewater rafting guide, rock climber, and outdoor program visionary and business manager. Today he is totally blind in one eye and has less than 2 percent vision remaining in his other eye.

Nonetheless, on a near-daily basis, you can find Zac in the

The National Center for Outdoor & Adventure Education’s founders Zac and Celine Adair recently returned from this month’s Outdoor Retailer Winter Market show in Salt Lake City, Utah, where the buzz inside The Calvin L. Rampton Salt Palace Convention Center was centered around moving the show out of Utah and to a state with “a more friendly view of federally designated lands.”

The controversy stems from a yearlong dispute that pits the present governor of Utah, Republican legislators and many residents of the area against environmentalists and dozens of Native American tribal nations.

The argument revolves around determining the best way to conserve and develop the Bears Ears area in southeastern Utah.

Named for a pair of isolated mesas resembling a bear raising its head above the horizon, Bears Ears National Monument encompasses 1.3 million acres of wilderness area between the San Juan and Colorado rivers. This triangle of land is held sacred by a number of Native American tribes, including a coalition of Hopi, Navajo, Ute Indian Tribe, Ute Mountain Ute and Zuni governments.

An estimated 100,000 archaeological sites are located (note: link opens a PDF file) — and protected — within the Bears Ears area, including cliff dwellings that date back more than 3,500 years and other cultural sites that are deemed sacred to the half dozen tribes that make up the coalition.

And while nearly everyone involved in this eco-dispute agrees the Bears Ears area should be protected, the extent of management of the land is in question, with many Utah legislators envisioning room for commercial development and fossil fuel extraction in lands adjacent to the area.

For more than four decades, Utah ranchers, residents and lawmakers have fought to

As 2016 comes to an end, we’re honored to take a moment out from our end-of-year activities to say thank everyone for their continued support and encouragement of The National Center for Outdoor & Adventure Education (NCOAE).

When our founders Zac & Celine Adair started this organization in 2009, their mission then for NCOAE was as clear as it is today — improve people’s self-confidence and interpersonal relationships through the teaching of a core curriculum emphasizing teamwork, environmental stewardship and the acquisition of technical outdoor skills. We’ve come a long way since 2009, and guided by that same mission, 2016 has been another year of phenomenal growth.

A few key highlights:

It’s been a while since Zac Adair and his wife, Celine, co-founded The National Center for Outdoor & Adventure Education (NCOAE), and while it would be nice to think they jumped into this challenging not-for-profit enterprise with eyes wide open, that wouldn’t be completely accurate.

Yes, going into it they had a great game plan. They had previously founded and run two other outdoor education organizations — a not-for-profit named Panacea Adventures, and the Adventure Education Institute (AEI) — which they merged to create NCOAE. But these North Carolina-based outdoor educators — raising their infant child — were working under a disadvantage that certainly couldn’t be ignored in the planning stages of NCOAE. And while some would consider it a major hurdle to their career plans, Zac and Celine saw it more as a nuisance.

So much so, in fact, that they haven’t felt it necessary to bring up the fact that Zac — a veteran surfer, rock climber, whitewater river guide and outdoors program business manager — lost the majority of his vision when he was struck on his bicycle by an automobile back in 2003.

And now, more than a dozen years later, he has less than 2 percent vision left (in just one eye) and he describes that vision through his good eye as, “seeing the world through a soda straw.”

The accident happened in Nags Head, N.C., in the late summer of 2003 while Zac was riding home on his bicycle after a session in the surfline. He was struck by a taxi traveling at 59 miles per hour. Zac was on life support for a full week. His cervical spine was broken in four places, his right leg was broken, he suffered severe right scapula damage, and as a result of the trauma, a year later he lost 98 percent of his vision in one eye, and 100 percent of his vision in his other eye.

Not many people — even those closely associated with NCOAE — are aware of Zac’s blindness, nor is it something the couple really cares to have bandied about. In fact, few of the course and training participants who meet Zac at NCOAE headquarters in Wilmington prior to departing for a local trip have any notion that our co-founder is legally blind.