A creek runs through our Outdoor School site. Actually two creeks run through Camp Adams; Milk Creek and Nate Creek. This splits the large site into two independent sites. Our Outdoor School program was situated on the Milk Creek Site, with generally a couple of cabins over in the Nate Creek site, which we fondly (or not so fondly, pending who you ask) called Hawaii. The confluence of the creek is where the students meet for studies on the Water Resource with Tsuga and Hazel. Further up Nate Creek is the cut bank where students look at a soil profile in the Soil Resource with Snag and me (Moose). If you follow the trail further you can cross over the creek into the Plants Resource area where you would study flora with Daisy, Dakota, and Ricochet. If by chance you do not cross Nate Creek, you can follow the trail close to Hawaii, and study fauna on the Animals Resource with Luna, Morrigan, and Rooster.
Not only this, but also the creek serves me with a metaphor for the progression of my experience at Outdoor School, particularly as I worked with my staff. When I first came to Milk Creek, new to the Multnomah Outdoor School Program, Nate Creek was running low. I looked down at the creek as saw a split creek. On the far side, the water flowed, the near side the water was stagnant. It held unmoving silt clouding the water. The distant side was like that of the returning staff members to Milk Creek. They moved along, aware of how the program works. The new staff members seemed to be fogged over with a wealth of knowledge that was being delivered to them early on. We were still the same creek, but there was a split in the way that we worked. As the winter season neared, we received some rain. This caused the creek to start flowing in a unified sense. This occurred around week 4 of the session. There was still cloudy areas, but for the most part the stream was no longer split into two distinct entities. The team of Program Leaders also meshed around week 4. We started to have a stronger vision of how we were working together. The creek still held foggy areas, as did the way that the six of us worked together. Week 5 was similar, but week 6 held dramatic changes. With the demands of a Halloween, the week was madness. Our first day of field study had torrential downpour. In fact a new record was set for the amount of rainfall on that particular day.
I wandered down to Nate Creek, and saw it gushing down the gully, tearing away at the earth. Frantically assembling a haunted house among other festive delights for all hallows eve, the staff worked together to pull off an amazing experience for the 6th graders. We moved quickly like Nate Creek. Toward the end of the week the stream had cleared. It was flowing quickly, but was clear. Our staff had successfully pulled off one of the best Halloweens that these 6th graders will probably ever experience. We worked well together, much like a consistent flow in the stream. Now all the silt that was gathered on site from Nate Creek and Milk Creek has flowed downstream, off site. In metaphor, I see this as symbolic of how the Outdoor School Experience has effected us and we will take something from site, carry it out of site, and effect something further down the line.
**** An Email from a student leader “I agree with you completely. Right now I’m sitting here in a hotel room in Baltimore, Maryland visiting colleges. Picture me trying to explain ODS to a pearl-and-tweed-suit-clad admissions officer in five minutes in an interview. ODS has been one of the best things I’ve ever done in my short life, but I know that as I get older it will continue being important. I’ve grown up a whole lot since I was a sophomore in this program. It’s unsettling, watching yourself grow up like that in front of your own eyes. “Yesterday I read an entry that I wrote in my journal a couple weeks before I came out for my week this fall. I was talking about ODS, and how apprehensive I was to come out and open up again. Because it’s painful when, again, it ends. It’s scary how numb we all become to real life sometimes. Maybe it’s because I’m at a stage where I’ve grown out of what I have to do everyday (high school), but I’m not quite at what my next stage will be (college). But I don’t know. It’s risky, though, to go out there and just have to deal directly with yourself for once. I finally feel validated, useful, just like you said. It feels good to be with people who acknowledge and complement each other. I always have such a horrible time adjusting back to real life. Going to school on Monday morning is okay, because I get to see my friends and teachers, and everybody asks me how things went. But then there’s Tuesday, and Wednesday, and Thursday and I still think about all of you 100x a day, but I can’t keep talking about it. Nobody cares. I don’t blame them. They weren’t there with me. That’s sad too. Little by little I forget about what it was like too. I hate that. “I hardly ever cry. But god, every time final campfire just gets me. Usually I try to stop it though. I didn’t really this time. It just felt so good. It feels good to cry about something good once in a while. Stop being numb. Just let yourself feel something for once. I think it’s a tendency to treat crying as a symptom of a problem that needs to be solved. We hardly ever treat crying as a solution to the problem. I walked my girls back in the dark and sat on my bunk and just sort of cried while they got their teeth brushed and got tucked in their sleeping bags waiting for a goodnight. It felt wonderful. And then it stopped as quickly as it started and I was laughing and partying and eating cookies. That’s the way it should be. That night I got out a piece of lined paper at 1am and wrote ‘I don’t ever want to forget this feeling. I don’t ever want to forget those words that my ears heard tonight. Somewhere in the really near future these words are going to be so necessary.’ That’s the truth.” **** I sent her my journal entries on my experience at ODS, and this was the thoughtful response she gave me. Around week 4, I had figured the job out fairly well. I was in the groove of understanding how to do my tasks in an efficient manner. I soon realized that many of my returning student leaders also knew their responsibilities. Taking time to teach them how to do their job seemed almost a waste of their time as well as mine. I started to take time to get to know the students as people, as opposed to student leaders. By week five and six I spent most my time trying to impart upon my student leaders something they could take out of Outdoor School with them. Like the silt in the creek floating downstream, I wanted to give them some words of wisdom. I still taught the high schoolers how to teach 6th graders about erosion, weathering, etc. but I tried to also give them something that would help them grow outside of ODS. I am, by no means, filled with infinite wisdom. I learned a great deal about communication while I was at ODS. A coworker taught me to work at understanding the difference between being self-critical and self-aware. I tried passing on this and other things that I learned in the last year of my life. I think that this had impact on some people, because in my final week, I started receiving some letters from past student leaders. Letters of thanks. I was looking at a internet forum for ODS student leaders, and saw my name mentioned a few times. I took the time to have a “Magical Mystery ‘Moose’ Moment” with some of my student leaders. During this I shared a quote, a story, or a poem that has impacted me. Some of the student leaders took what I said to heart and wrote back thanking me for the advice. I even saw applied advice a couple weeks later, which showed me that the SLs were listening to what I had to say.
**** The final week of ODS was madness. We had torrential rain. We had halloween to set up for. We had to take down all the gear and store it for the winter. But our team of SLs, PLs, and FIs cruised through these responsibilities nearly flawlessly. For Halloween I shared “Scary Stories” with the sixth graders. I recited “The Cremation of Sam McGee” by Robert W. Service as a preliminary story. Then I took cues from the sixth graders to create a second “true” story of the missing bride of Camp Adams. My story developed with each group, and by the final group I had a crisp story. Sadly, I did scare a few sixth graders too much. This however gave me the opportunity to talk with the scared ones later, telling them the story isn’t true. It became a secret that I shared with them, telling them to keep the story “alive” for the other students. By the end of the week, there was a few sixth graders who came to me and thanked me for sharing a secret with them. They were able to listen to their scared classmates, yet feel secure in knowing the truth.
**** At the end of the week, one sixth grader came up to me and thanked me. She received all the beeds, a rare honor. I think around 200 sixth graders have received all beeds in the 40,000+ students under Cherokees as Site Supervisor. This young girl and I had a similar sense of humor. We sat at a table together once for lunch and without talking, just started staring up at the ceiling to see how many people we could get looking up. Soon our whole table was staring at the ceiling, she looked over at me and smiled…mission accomplished.
**** Its the small stories, the tiny connections, the simple day-to-day experiences that you get to share with people that make the experience at ODS so wonderful. I can not explain it, but those there understand what makes ODS a drug for the soul.
Happy Trails, Inner Peace, & Harmony
