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Ken Howle reflects on finding his path through NOC
BY CORY VAILLANCOURT leading an outdoor venture and leading Lake POLITICS E DITOR Junaluska through a pandemic,” he said. n retrospect, it’s no surprise Ken Howle “Both required being fully immersed in the ended up at a place where lives are transsituation, keeping focused on where you are formed through renewal of soul, mind going, and then constantly adjusting based and body — because that’s exactly where he on the situation and the safety of everyone started. involved.” Howle has served as the executive direcPayson Kennedy, who founded NOC in tor of Lake Junaluska Conference and 1972, taught Howle the value of being fully Retreat Center since 2018, but prior to joinpresent in one’s work as well as the possibiliing the staff at the lake, Howle worked at NOC for Lake Junaluska Executive 14 years. Director Ken Howle got his start “You could call it at the NOC. Donated photo recreation, but in many ways, it was really re-creation of who we are,” he said. “We were able to take people that had never experienced something like that and give them those transformational experiences and forever change their lives, as well as ours.” The Greenville, South Carolina, native attended Western Carolina University from 1987 to 1991 and earned a degree in business administration with an emphasis on marketing. He began working at the Nantahala Outdoor Center in 1990 because of what he called a “deep love” for the outdoors and for sharing that with others. While there were plenty of summer jobs at NOC, year-round jobs were scarce, so that first summer Howle set ty of both living in the moment and also off to work for the National Science being practical and rational. Foundation doing logistical support as well “The two truly can coexist and when balas search and rescue on the Antarctic peninanced together, it creates the highest quality sula. of life,” Howle said. “Payson used to read When he came back to Western North from Robert Pirsig’s ‘Zen and the Art of Carolina in 1992, he was offered a yearMotorcycle Maintenance’ at new staff orienround position at NOC. tations.” “We all wore a lot of hats at NOC,” said The other thing Howle learned from Howle. “Cross-training was a big part of the Kennedy was that since the quality of the NOC experience. While much of the work guides at NOC was important, they needed to that I did was centered around marketing, be hired based on their personalities, and not public relations and group sales, I worked in necessarily their experience or credentials. every department at NOC.” “Here at Lake Junaluska, the same holds A typical day, Howle said, could involve true. Any staff person we hire, when they’re leading a raft trip, running a new employee driven by the mission and driven towards orientation or meeting with group leaders creating amazing guest experiences, they’re planning trips to NOC. gonna be phenomenal employees,” he said. “I was also heavily involved with the “We can teach anyone theology. We can employee ownership program and served on teach anyone how to clean a room or rent a the board of directors at NOC most of the canoe or work an audio/video system for an time I was there,” he said. event. But first and foremost, when we hire Howle’s career trajectory took him from them, we want them to have that passion of NOC to Lake Junaluska in 2004, where he sharing things with others and the passion showed up ready to go, thanks to his experifor the mission of Lake Junaluska. And that’s ences at NOC. something a hundred percent that I saw 8 “There are many similarities between firsthand at NOC.”
but it was also about culture. “Horace, Relia and I envisioned a community where a group of friends who loved sharing outdoor adventures together could enjoy those activities more frequently while providing support and instruction to others to make it safe and easy for them to do the same,” Payson said. Payson’s 2018 book “NOC Stories: Changing Lives at the Nantahala Outdoor Center since 1972,” catalogues that culture through a collection of essays written by those who lived it in the decades following the center’s founding. “For the privilege of working, I was paid $80/week plus room and board,” wrote Sue Firmstone Goddard, who worked at NOC 1974-1975. “I’ve never been happier. I had to be told to take my mandatory days off, or I would just keep guiding.” That team-player, joy-driven atmosphere combined with recruitment of topnotch guides to put NOC on the path to success. In addition to a retail business, NOC became a respected training ground for world-class athletes, and a hub for innovation in whitewater technique and instruction. “I remember teaching myself to roll a kayak from a piece of paper that had a stick figure on it,” Bunny Johns, a gold medalist, Whitewater Hall of Fame member, longtime employee and, later, president of NOC, said in a 2017 interview. “I’d turn over and I’d try something. Eventually I taught myself to roll. Now a good instructor could teach somebody to roll in an hour or so.” Advancements in instruction are partially due to Johns’ own work, and that of other innovators at NOC. According to the nomination package that resulted in Johns’ induction to the Hall of Fame, she spent “countless hours” in the 1980s working on the American Canoe Association instruction certification program. As head of NOC’s whitewater instruction program, she helped develop whitewater rescue techniques that “profoundly influenced the life-
saving whitewater/swiftwater safety courses now taught worldwide.” To date, NOC has served as home base for 23 Olympic athletes, including two gold medal winners, of which Johns was one. Just last year, Bryson City resident Evy Leibfarth, 17, competed in the Tokyo Games, finishing 12th in kayak and 18th in canoe. In 2019, she medaled in two World Cup events.
SOAKED WITH JOY May 27 is the first dry day in a week of heavy rain, and the Nantahala is roaring. The NOC website describes the stretch of
NOC AT FIFTY river as “crystal-clear” with “splashy” rapids and occasional calm waters, but today it’s all white, rushing along at 3,600 cubic feet per second compared to the usual 750 cfs. “If you go on this trip, you will get wet,” Jess Austin, the lead guide for the 1 p.m. trip, tells the 40-odd guests sitting on the wooden benches in front of him. “The only dry seat is on the bus.” He runs through his safety speech and plays a video that warns of the risk inherent in a whitewater trip. It all sounds pretty serious. Then we load up in the bus, and the mood changes. Everybody who’s accepted a seat has also accepted both the risk and the reward of an afternoon on the water, and the anticipation births a buzz of excitement that reverberates through the metal tube. The long-haired 20-somethings assisting Austin, a retired lawyer with an admirable repertoire of dad jokes, can barely contain their enthusiasm. They whoop and holler and eye the whitecapped river rushing along the road. They’re young, but they’re experienced. With the river so high, only returning guides are working today. For his part, Austin has decades of recreational paddling and seven years of guiding to his name.
Smoky Mountain News
June 8-14, 2022
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Bunny Johns (far left) stands with her teammates after their historic win at the 1981 World Whitewater Championships. Donated photo
