Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention.

As a community informed by the teachings of Islam, we might also say, “Indeed, with hardship comes ease.” Q 94:5

Dust and Tribe is about the experience of growth through adventure. We recognize that the grandest adventure of all is the life each of us has been tasked to live, but it’s easy to lose sight of this. For this reason, we stage events that put participants outside so as to better expose us all to the vicissitudes of the wild world.

When we understand that the unexpected rainstorm is an inconvenient metaphor for disappointment on the job or in your marriage or in the political process, we start to see the wisdom of getting into the wilderness where our illusions of control are more expeditiously relinquished. And when we peel off our jackets and climb into our dry tents to marvel at the storm without risking hypothermia, we understand how all of our disappointments can crystallize into precious wisdom. The world rages and we are safe because we’ve been here before and we know better.

The wilderness teaches. Everything is better shared and we loved hosting you outside where we could all learn these lessons together.

And now the pandemic has changed everything. For months Dust and Tribe was paralyzed, uncertain of how to continue with our gathering work.

But in early June I was blessed to get into conversation with men and women who helped me realize that it was only my rigidity preventing me from seeing a path forward. And from those conversations, the Campfire group was born. Not much more than an email group, it was enough to see that, under present circumstances, people could and would gather in a digital space. The need for community is simply too great.

But the irony of a wilderness adventure community engaging one another from behind a computer was not lost on us. So there were more conversations.

From all of this comes D&T Steps, a framework for putting all of us back on the Connecting Path to grow through adventures. Together.

Dust and Tribe has put together a set of four challenges, each one a Step meant to put you into communion first with yourself, then your family, then your community, and then God.

The adventures do not, on the surface, ask much of you. The First Step, as an example, is an opportunity to connect with yourself through an extended solo hike. Hit the trails by yourself and you have accomplished the task.

Except that we are doing this together, and this is where I am so excited by the creativity and imagination of my colleagues. Because you could simply do the hike and call it a day.

But what if we asked you to level up? What if we had suggestions for how you could enrich the experience of taking yourself into the wild, suggestions that might make you laugh, might make you cry, or might even threaten to take you so far out of your comfort zone that you consider giving up on the hike altogether?

How about doing the entire hike in a costume? What about writing a poem inspired by the hike? Will you consider doing the hike after dark?

And what if we rewarded you for just how far you took the experiment, a point for every one of our suggestions that you take seriously? And what if we kept track of those points and promised you, in honor of your bold integrity, equipment that could change your outdoor experience entirely?

That’s the plan with D&T Steps, and in the best twist ever, we now have an opportunity to grow our community from a regional darling to a global network of wild seekers.

D&T Steps is set to commence with the Islamic New Year, the first new moon of the Hijri calendar whose birth is anticipated August 20, 2020.

We hope that you will break new ground with us.

Find more information here.

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