You’ll find us celebrating each other’s excursions into the ocean, into the depths of the sea, vigilant on the coastline, hiking up peaks, skiing down chutes and barrelling down trails. You’ll find us without a map. You’ll find us adrift. You’ll find us found.

You’ll find us on a weekend getaway, camping by a lazy river, shrugging off the Fundamentals for a couple days, reminiscing about music and our first daring-dos, our past selves, the things we’ve abandoned and everything we’ve managed to regain from time. When we bring nature into our circle, only good things happen. Pubs and cafes have been the traditional crossroads of men; things get proclaimed there, debated there, celebrated, fought over and embraced there. A pub is a fantastic place to meet; it’s comfortable and known. You have a certain idea of who you are in the lingua franca of these places.

But I’ve found that something pretty magical happens when MT9 gathers in nature.

Maybe it’s because nature doesn’t lie. You come into it as you are, and it responds without judgement or prejudice, which is the foundation of trust in all Tables. Mishap and misfortune, grace and benevolence abound in nature, just as in our own lives. It’s a privilege to sit next to a man in nature in his honesty.

Maybe it’s because nature is inherently democratic. As Walt Whitman tells us, ‘Every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.’ Everyone is equal around a fire or under the stars or stepping foot-by-foot along a worn trail. Our lives are brought into greater context as we bring our individuality into the collective. We bear witness to each other on levels having nothing to do with status or income, the bottom line or what we hope to own or things that have left us. It’s a privilege to sit next to a man in nature in his humility.

Maybe it’s because nature makes us realise our interdependence. At MT9, we celebrate that experience of feeling ‘small’ in the wider world; an important thread in a larger tapestry. I feel like a better father, husband and friend when I realise how much I need my larger community, how I’m an integral part of society, and what would suffer if I retreated into my own world (as I’m wont to do). Having the infinite ocean as a backdrop reinforces that perspective. A group of guys sharing and celebrating our flicker of life as swell pounds the cliffs. It’s a privilege to sit next to a man in nature who is connected with his family and community.

There’s an ‘earthiness’ to MT9 that I love. We’re grounded, literally. We take cues from the wider world around us. It doesn’t matter if we retreat to the cliché of metaphor: our ‘avalanche of worries’, our ‘new horizons’. We take our families into the wild, and bring back our insights. We walk by the beach in shared sorrow. We wander together along country roads; we look forward to seeing each other whole, before sundown. We’re there for each other when the wolves circle; we’re there for each other at sunrise.