Listening to stories told around a campfire under the stars in Outback Australia is one of life’s great experiences. But listening -- really deep listening -- to these stories from the past requires discipline. I learned that awkwardly many years ago with a group of Japanese and American athletes in Central Australia on an adventure training exercise.
We were in Kings Canyon, a spectacular area of soaring cliffs and palm-filled gorges. After an adrenaline-charged day of physical activity, our hosts had arranged for a traditional Aboriginal custodian of the land to talk to us about how the First Nations people viewed the cosmos. But as a cross-cultural communications exercise, we turned it into a disaster without even realizing it; we were too noisy and too self-centered to listen properly to what the old man was trying to tell us in a quiet, low-key way.
