We humans have evolved to sit around campfires and share our stories in order to share our knowledge, to inspire each other collectively, to overcome our challenges, to connect with each other better, to understand, as the poet Wallace Stevens put it, “How to Live, What to Do.”

Sitting around our fires, we have evolved to recognize that we are all in the same boat. Recognizing that the pursuit of our modern-day goals, however, often puts us at odds with our collective welfare, pries us apart instead of pulls us together, activates animus instead of amity, and is the reason that 14 years ago Jib Ellison hosted the first Blu Skye Confluence to put us, figuratively and literally, into the same boat.

“I have seen first-hand,” Jib says, “how rafting rivers brings disparate people together. Paddling in raging whitewater, sleeping under the stars, taking a riverside shit in a can with a million-dollar view, being a bit grimy and disheveled, it brings people together like nothing else.”

My first Confluence was in 2008, and I’ve been on most of them since. I missed a few because I had conflicting obligations. I can’t remember those “conflicts”, but had I gone on the two-day trips down one of the premier rivers in California’s Sierra Nevada, I know I would have remembered scenes as I have from the trips I did attend.

In 2011, on the Kern River, with Liam Casey, an Irishman who broke the paradigm owning and operating his own electronic factory in Shenzhen, who confided to us that his worst fears were water and heights, and how as we eddied out next to a high riverside rock, he climbed to top, breathed deeply and jumped, dog-paddled ashore, then stood and cried as we hugged him.

In 2013, on the Tuolumne River, Doug McMillon, CEO of Walmart, who told how as a junior buyer in fishing supplies, an old-timer counseled him to pick a product, go to the supplier and negotiate a better price. He blindly chose an ointment fisherman apply to lures to attract fish. A few weeks later, making his rounds, Sam Walton asked everyone what they had done recently. Doug reported he had negotiated a better price on the ointment product. Sam paused and then said, “Son, what makes you think fish can smell?” “Sir,” Doug replied, “It doesn’t matter if fish can smell. It only matters that fisherman think fish can smell.”

In 2022, again on the Tuolumne (that over the years has become the river-of-choice), around the fire Tom Steyer, impact investor and former US presidential candidate, in answer to Jib’s question what personal reflection that day had been important, answered, “It’s how incredibly kind everyone has been to each other on this trip.”

Kindness on the Confluence trips includes an unspoken commitment to empathy and to being a good listener. Conversations include sharing insights on how to solve the major challenges to our organizations, our societies, our planet. Implicit and often explicit in every comment is the recognition that no one person and no one organization can solve the challenges alone. In every comment is the recognition we are all in the same boat.

View Rick’s bio