My son Jack heads off to the Wolf Ridge Environmental Learning Center (ELC) in Finland, MN with his sixth grade class this week.
I did not attend ELC when I was young, as it didn’t open in Finland until 1988. However I was lucky enough to visit Wolf Ridge with my daughter six years ago with her class.
We climbed a rock wall, fed birds in the palm of our hands, tried to make fire with flint and bark, and most memorable to me, we crossed a high ropes course. I walked across single ropes, double ropes and logs 40 feet in the air to the third landing and there I stayed, cheering sixth graders as they made their way across. Each one passed me to a tall landing where they took a zip line to the ground. I was fine until the very end, when—gulp—it was my turn to jump.
No way is it in any part of my nature to step off a platform 40 feet in the air! Even if I am safely attached with a carabineer. I froze.
I think back to how lucky I was to grow up in the nature of the North Shore. We played in the woods almost every summer day building forts and digging worms. My parents, bless their hearts, took my brother and me camping and fishing on a regular basis.
I liked camping a lot more once we bought a pickup camper. It was less buggy than the tent.
Some of our best stories come from those camping trips. One time my mom brought peanut butter cookies along for lunch and we left them on the picnic table in a Tupperware container. While we were out fishing two little squirrels stole every single cookie and hid them high in the trees. When we got back and found out we’d been robbed we chased them around for a good hour just for fun. Some of the cookies were still edible when Dad knocked them down out of the tree.
I suppose by now you are wondering how I finally made it to the ground from the 40-foot platform…No, they didn’t have to call the Finland rescue squad to bring a ladder (That would have been really embarrassing for me and even worse for my daughter.).
Even though I tried and tried there was just no way I could make myself do it without a little help. There was a “kind” Annandale real estate agent also chaperoning. He jumped at the opportunity to push me off the ledge into thin air. (I actually begged him to do me this favor. I said just count to three and push me on two.)
I guess sometimes we can’t wait to be part of nature and then there are times when we have to be pushed!
I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for in going out, I found, I was really going in.
John Muir, 1913
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