A few years ago, I went on a field trip with other land trust educators to a preserve owned by a North Carolina land trust. After purchasing the land, the trust handed it over to a small outdoor school that hosted almost all of its classes and lessons outdoors. Parents would send their children off to school with whatever they needed for the day, dropping them off in a cleared field adjacent to a yurt that was only used when inclement weather turned dangerous.
These all-terrain, all-weather kids use the natural landscape to make their own world. From logs and old trees, they create reading areas and landmarks. Each year, the names of these areas change, and , those become their names, in perpetuity, in the minds and hearts of that year’s class.
As an educator, it’s often understood that I teach kids what things are. For older students, this is mostly true. At some point, we delve into identification: what is and isn’t edible, and get into the weeds about the plants we find and creatures we see. What’s the difference between an anhinga and a cormorant? How do we know which yellow flower is which? According to research compiled by the Children and Nature Network, “meaningful outdoor experiences benefit children and inspire them to love and care for nature.” The focus on meaningful, positive experiences does not mean they must pass a quiz, but that they keep knowledge and positive memories .
I’m honored to witness the sheer joy of kids discovering the great outdoors and all its wonders. One of my favorite things to witness is their curiosity before I share the given names of animals and plants. There’s a joy-filled twinkling of time in their discovery and simply knowing of a new organisms existence. There’s a bright time when things just are, and their names don’t matter as much. Educating at this point is less about what things are but that they are. In our bustling adult lives, we’re so focused on something’s name and its place in the grander ecosystem that we sometimes miss the tree for the landscape.
Early in my career, I worked for the Florida Conservation Corps and had a rudimentary understanding of Florida’s natural communities. On the first day, the Assistant Park Manager at Oscar Scherer told us to walk the trails and show back up tomorrow. There were no identification booklets, and I didn’t have the app, iNaturalist, yet. I was tasked with seeing the forest, finding the trees, and knowing, deeply, that the park is there. For a few weeks, my partner and I stumbled about, finding our own landmarks, and naming them as we knew them. The management area designations, species lists, and extremely helpful apps came later. Even now, when I encounter something I’ve never seen before, I look deeply, appreciating that I have seen and it’s there to see, all before whipping out my phone for a species ID.
The next time you hit the trails, try it! Put the books and apps away for a little while. Don’t worry about what kind of warbler that brown and yellow bird is; don’t even try to recall. Try to reach inside and find that joy, and instead of wondering what it is, find the wonder that it’s there in the first place.
