She was wearing a T-shirt and jeans--a tall, slender woman with a three foot single braid of hair down her back. I interviewed Gruffie in a small, white-washed room in the basement of the Colorado Outward Bound Headquarters. As much as any person I’ve interviewed, Gruffie radiates an aura of courage, confidence and goodwill.

 Gruffie grew up in Iowa in the 1950s. She had three brothers. Her father was an alcoholic. Her mother worked, and kept things together through the financial stress. She describes the family as being focused on relationships and qualities rather than possessions. "The major point," she says "is that I had this absolutely incredible mother that wove this sort of safe home to be in...and loving home to be in."

 She lived in community houses in the sixties and early seventies, working as a waitress and carpenter, among other things. Then came a graduate degree in education. She got spit out of that early twenties lifestyle, as she puts it, as a high school teacher and, in the summers, an Outward Bound instructor. Her connection with Outward Bound has taken her up mountains in Peru, Africa, the Soviet Union, Mexico and Colorado. Medium peaks--19,000 to 22,000 feet. They take days to climb but weeks and sometimes months are spent getting acclimatized. Outward Bound, she says, has given her not only opportunities to climb around the world, but the reinforcement to pursue the things that make her feel really alive. It is a community of people that share the same values--a movement you get swept up in--a lifestyle.

 In 1981, Gruffie and her husband Bob Roark (interviewed separately), worked in refugee camps in the Sudan. "After that experience, we knew we wanted to do work more in Africa but we didn't want to do crisis care. It’s important stuff but it doesn't really empower people. It keeps them alive but there are big missing pieces about really helping people develop full lives."  So in 1984, she went back to Africa with a Fulbright grant to work on a curriculum for high school kids. While there, Gruffie and her husband became aware of a remote area along the shore of Lake Victoria in Kenya where about 40,000 people were living without medical care. So she moved there with a tent, and helped the people build a clinic and start agricultural projects. Later, with the first shipment of medicine, came two kayaks. One for her, and one for her husband, who has a medical background and who is a paraplegic from an ice-climbing accident that occurred when he was an Outward Bound instructor.

 She continues to go back to Africa regularly. She goes to the community development project--Gruffie and Bob are "the old guard--maintaining relationships, dealing with the subtleties of things like AIDs education, problem solving, how to resolve conflicts."  She also works on other community development and relief projects funded by the U.S. government and corporations that have an interest in the stability of the African countries in which they have investments. In addition, she is helping Colorado Outward Bound develop a cross-cultural Outward Bound program in Kenya. And, when necessary, she still gets in a kayak and spends days or weeks traveling to remote villages with medicine.

. . .

 I asked Gruffie about power.

My experience with power is that it is not based on strength, it is based on weaknesses. If someone says that you are strong, you are powerful they tend to mean that you have influence, you have money, you have prestige, you have name, you have position. Those things have their place, and their time, and their appropriateness. But I think internal power--I have the capacity to move to Africa, I have the capacity to climb this rock, I have capacity to get through this divorce, I have the capacity to do my job well or to live my life well is different. That sort of internal power, I think, is incredibly ironic. This is where it becomes very spiritual and a bit Eastern. You only gain that power by letting it go.

A person that wants to be powerful will concentrate on their strengths. What do I have to get?  What do I have to possess?  What do I have to own?  Who do I have to have under my thumb? 

But people who are truly powerful, who do truly amazing things in life, are the ones that have let go of external power. Have let go of position and possessions. They recognize their weaknesses. They become far more aware of how they are vulnerable. Far more aware of what they are frightened of. Once you address those issues there is far less left to fear and you go about your business.

So I can work in a malarial ridden country, or a country that has AIDs and because I've dealt with what I'm vulnerable to--whether it be death, or money--those issues don't scare me anymore.

Said another way:  Someone said to me, after hearing about my background in Africa, "You are such a strong person."  I feel very humble about what I've done with my life. I don't think I have achieved great things. But I said to them, if this makes any sense, that if I'm strong it’s not because of my strengths. If I'm strong, it’s because I know my weaknesses. So, it’s all about being in situations where I've had to be honest with myself, what I could change, what I couldn't change. When I'm frightened what really could harm me and what can't. Those situations have led me to do a lot of thinking and reflecting. In a way, because I acknowledge my weaknesses I am far freer. Being willing to be alone, being willing to be in unique environments, being willing to do things that others can't or won't do for me has been about becoming aware of how vulnerable I am.