The OSAT Traditions

      OSAT is steeped in tradition, and its members cherish the double meanings woven into various aspects of our identity. This page is an addendum to the OSAT History page which focuses on these facets of One Step At A Time. This material relies almost exclusively on the documentation available in the club newsletter archives, which provide no attribution for the ideas. Since Jim H was the one-man organizer, administrator, and newsletter editor of OSAT during these first few years, we are left to assume that development of ideas presented here were primarily his, although if he were here he would be the first to correct that notion if it were not correct.

OSAT Name
Purpose
Mission
Motto
Dalai Lama Quotation

Name

     In the April 1991 newsletter, four names for the organization were suggested for consideration. Most of the suggestions attempted to make some connection between climbing and the recovery aspects of the group:

     The dozen or so people who showed up for the first organizational meeting on April 24 1991 selected "One Step at a Time" (OSAT) as the name for the club. This name had been adopted earlier as the name of the Thursday night AA meetings which began on Tiger Mountain April 11. The multiple possible interpretations of the name certainly lead to its attractiveness. To people who don't want to get involved in explaining the recovery aspect of the club, the name is an innocuous reference to a hiking and climbing truism, but to AA members and friends it is also a clever play on AA's "one day at a time" motto, also incorporating in its interesting turn of the phrase the idea of the "steps" fundamental to AA philosophy.
      It has never seemed to bother anyone that the single "A" in the acronym doesn't precisely match the "at a" in the name, and as a result capitalization of the "at a" in the name seems subject to each particular writer's whim.

Purpose and Mission Statement

     Jim H used a long succession of phrases as part of the masthead for the OSAT newsletter (now known as The Yodel, but in the early years simply entitled "One Step at a Time") to describe the purpose of the club. He began with:

"Spiritual adventures in the mountains - one day and one step at a time" (6/13/91)

. . . which attempted to evoke the spirituality aspects of AA as well as explicitly making the link between the AA motto and the club name. This latter aspect was at once perhaps both too blatant and too subtle, so a few months later the masthead sported the explanation:

"OSAT - an outdoor club for members of Twelve Step Recovery Programs" (8/22/91)

It should be noted that there were discussions early on as to whether the club should be open to AA members only or members of any twelve stop program. This declaration reflected the group conscience on that issue. Later that year, the "outdoor club" identity was made more specific, as:

"A mountaineering club for members of twelve step recovery programs" (11/5/91)

When it was pointed out that spouses and "significant others" were also participating actively in the organization, the decision was made to broaden the purpose to include them, thus:

"A mountaineering club for members and friends of twelve step recovery programs" (2/13/92)

Finally, midway through the second summer season of OSAT activities, realization that a spectrum of outdoor interests was represented within the club, even though mountaineering was clearly the foundation, the purpose readopted "outdoor club" as the fundamental noun describing the group. This purpose statement, which now has withstood the test of four years of use, describes in a dozen (that magic twelve!) words, what OSAT is all about:

"An outdoor club for members and friends of twelve step recovery programs" (7/14/92)

Jim H presented a proposal to the February 1994 club meeting that included additional organizational responsibilities for the Board of Trusted Servants (BOTS). The BOTS's organizational proposal discussed at the March club meeting included, as the first mentioned BOTS responsibility, to develop and submit to the full membership for approval a statement on the mission (purpose and objectives) of OSAT. At the April 1994 business meeting the Mission Statement was adopted as follows:

In the months that followed, additions and alterations were proposed during several club meetings, but most members felt that, while the suggestions were typically valid aspirations and statements of principle for the group, they unnecessarily complicated the otherwise straightforward mission statement, which remains today in its originally adopted form.

Motto

     From the point of few of following the history of a phrase, the origins of the OSAT motto are particularly interesting to trace. After years of use, we tend to think of these words as automatic, presuming they sprang forth in finished form. Indeed a majority of today's members have known nothing else, and even among those who were involved with OSAT from the start, few remember the turns the phrase took before reaching its timeless simplicity.
      The heading of the June 13, 1991 newsletter incorporated the phrase "Spiritual adventures in the mountains - one day and one step at a time." As the name of the club began to stand on its own double meaning, and the purpose evolved to a more utilitarian form, the need for a club motto emerged.
      On the November 1991 newsletter, the phrase "Climb mountains and don't slip" appeared on the masthead below the purpose statement for the first time. Here again, Jim evokes a double entendre as a technique to link mountaineering and recovery. "Don't slip" has obvious meaning to a climber, but certainly the deeper meaning in the context of staying clean and sober holds much more significance to vast majority of OSAT members.
      On the March 1992 newsletter, for reasons that are unclear, this was changed to much less elegant "Keep climbing mountains and don't drink in between." Perhaps Jim was feeling some members needed a more blatant reminder of what was intended.
      The May 1 1992 newsletter was the first in which Jim quoted the Dalai Lama under the simple motto "Keep Climbing Mountains", which vaguely suggests, the AA meeting admonition to "Keep coming back."
      On the October 1992 newsletter, the motto was altered slightly to read "Keep climbing mountains and don't slip in between." Again, Jim appears to have wrestled the prose into a more blatant explanation of what he wants the phrase to convey. AA's "Keep coming back" simply implies not slipping in between, and this version of the OSAT phrase loses the double entendre charm of the simpler ". . . and don't slip" originally used a year earlier. Nevertheless, the makings of the more elegant present form were now all there.
      Finally in the May 1993 newsletter, the motto appeared for the first time in its current form, "Keep climbing mountains and don't slip."  This was the version of the phrase which had been recommended at the April 1993 club meeting as the meeting closing mentioned in the AA group preamble, subsequently adopted by group conscience at the next Tiger AA meeting. Although remarkably close to the original phrase, it had taken two years and five renditions to evolve to its current form. Later, Jim (and subsequently others) began writing this at the close of articles in the newsletter, summit registers, or elsewhere, and in some places it appears simply as "KCM-ADS".

The Dalai Lama Quote

     The quotation from The 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet first appeared in the March 25, 1992 newsletter. Jim H was first exposed to the quotation about the spirituality of mountains from the Dalai Lama in a drama concerning mountaineering. He made the effort to get the full text of the quote, and began including it in the club newsletter. The quotation has become a cherished tradition of OSAT, reminding us why mountains and mountaineering are important in our lives.

     The relationship of height to spirituality is not merely metaphorical, it is a physical reality.  The most spiritual people of this planet live in the highest places.  So do the most spiritual flowers . . . I call the high and light aspects of my being spirit and the dark and heavy aspect soul.  Soul is at home in the deep shadowed valleys.  Spirit is a land of high, white peaks and glittering jewel-like lakes and flowers . . . People need to climb the mountain not simply because it is there, but because the soulful divinity needs to be mated with the spirit.
-- 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet

 

"Keep climbing mountains and don't slip!"