Outdoor Education

When I moved to Chicago seven years ago, I felt like I was losing something. For those of you used to the outdoors, you might understand what I am talking about. I knew that nature was important to me, but I don’t think of myself as an outdoor woman. I don’t do a lot of hiking or camping or fishing. I don’t own hardly any outdoor gear. But there are little clues around my house… the vases full of shells from California and Florida. Another full of rocks from the north shore of Lake Superior. The plants that fill my dining room. And, of course, the jeep I own.

The wilderness and faith trip allowed me to reclaim some of the outdoor in me… and to explore some of the reasons why nature is such a part of my soul. A lot of it has to do with where I grew up. Our house was surrounded by untouched hills filled with oak trees, poison ivy, and deer… Deer everywhere. So many that they spilled over into our streets and gardens. Less than a mile from our house was the San Francisco Bay. We’d climb the rocks that protected the roadway. My brother would fish out on the points. For a few years we had a boat in the harbor.

My school nurtured this love of nature. One of the benefits of growing up in Northern California. There was a salt marsh out back we would explore. Several times a year we would go on field trips to see Mrs. Terwilliger, a local naturalist who would gather us kids in a circle and teach us to flap our wings like the various birds from the area. We’d explore Ducksbury Reef, wandering through the tidal pools looking at anemones, mussels, and small fish. I still remember when the bee keeper came to school and I was the one who got to dress up and attempt to smoke the bees out of their hives (there weren’t really any bees, but I didn’t know that at the time!) And there were the trips to the aquarium, wandering along the ledge that allowed us to be eye level with the fish. I was sure I wanted to be an oceanographer. I even did one of my junior high reports on Jacques Cousteau.

And my parents added to this love of the outdoors. Some of my favorite memories are camping with the family. They were always short trips… but my family would drive down a dirt road in the midst of nowhere and park alongside a stream. Trout fishing. Campfires. And projects. I remember gathering leaves and making them into a book. Each page labeled with the name of the tree. We also used to go on an annual hike to see the Salmon spawning in Samuel P. Taylor State Park. It was almost always a misty or rainy day. We would pull off on the side of the road and start hiking up the trail along the stream. Back into the damp woods.

My mom had nature projects for us all the time. Collecting driftwood and making them into little creatures. Digging molds for sand candles. Making sun catchers with leaves, melted crayons and wax paper. Spray painting spider webs and mounting them on paper. She may have gotten some of her love of nature from her parents who do a fair share of birdwatching.

It is a heritage I am very grateful for. This love of nature. It is part of my culturally constructed understanding of the wilderness. It is part of the privilege of growing up in a world where wilderness is for beauty and recreation, not an entity to struggle with for survival. Those who struggle with wilderness may also have a love of nature, but it will be different, formed in a different context.

I wonder how Israel’s understanding of the wilderness was formed? Certainly witnessing to the plagues in Egypt, experiencing God as a pillar of fire, wandering for years in the wilderness shaped a generation’s understanding of nature. And their understanding of God. Jesus carried with him this heritage and then added his own experiences of the temptation and a life on the Sea of Galilee. Where do my understandings of nature and God intersect with those of Israel? And how does that change or enhance my reading of scripture?

It is this attempt to read context that I think is so vital to our understanding of scripture and theology. By examining my own context and that of those who are different than me, my own understanding of God is enhanced, widened, deepened. My own perceptions are questioned and I am able to consider and question the perceptions of others. And together, perhaps, we can come to understand more of this vast God that we worship and serve.

Constructing Wilderness

One of the first articles we read for the Wilderness and Faith class was “The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature,” by William Cronon. The article explores how the idea of “wilderness” has been constructed by our culture. Cronon argues that while as late as the late eighteenth century wilderness as seen as “deserted, savage, desolate, barren, -- in short, a waste” by the late 1800’s wilderness was romanticized as a part of the foundation of the United States. With the frontier disappearing, with the development of urbanization, the wilderness became a place where white men (primarily) “rediscovered their primitive racial energies, reinvented direct democratic institutions, and thereby reinfused themselves with a vigor, an independence, and a creativity that were the source of American democracy and national character.”

Many people think Cronon was challenging or weakening the environmental movement. They believed that he was arguing against conservation. I disagree. I think Cronon was simply exploring how our culture has shaped our idea of wilderness and how that can, at times, distort our relationship to it. He writes of how the ideal wilderness was a place without people, pristine, untouched. To romanticize the wilderness and frontier allowed us to pretend that we didn’t drive the Native American people from the land. To assume that wilderness is most ideal when not in relationship to humanity allows gives us no place to explore ways of healthy interaction with nature and reclaiming our tie to the land. Wilderness in isolation allows us to continue to take land from the poor and those we devalue for a “higher good.”

I am not arguing against the need to preserve pristine landscapes. I think it is valuable for us to recognize our limits in this world and our place sharing this planet with all of creation. Cronon points out, though, that our concept of wilderness was tied to an idealized beauty, a sense of the sublime. Early on, this meant that we preserved spectacular landscapes before attending to the less striking. Yosemite becomes a national treasure, but the desert Central Valley of California only a few miles away is turned into one big irrigated, farmland.

I think this idea has changed in the last few decades. I grew up with an appreciation of a variety of types of wilderness. California is full of striking national parts, but surrounding our house were rolling brown (years of drought) hills covered in oak trees and poison ivy, full of deer and chipmunks. They had been set aside by the utility company and full of fire trails. Behind our elementary school was the marsh, a salt-water wetlands that was part of our educational experience. I remember how ugly I though it was. Yet I learned to look for the red wing blackbirds that would try to lure us away from their nests by feigning injury. I remember the smell of the fennel and the fuzz of the cattails. I remember how out of place it looked when the built a tennis court right in the middle of it all. I was taught early on to appreciate a variety of wildernesses.
This seems quite biblical. Recognizing the value of all of creation. Not valuing those who seems more valuable or beautiful on the surface. But recognizing that we are all connected, the body of Christ. In the same way, all of creation is related to one another. One great organism. At times we have overlooked the parts that have seemed less valuable, but as God reminds us, often those parts that look the least valuable are to be valued the most.

Below are a few of my attempts to find beauty in the "less spetacular" parts of nature:

Lake Superior's North Shore...

This past week I traveled to northern Minnesota with the Wilderness and Faith class offered by North Park Theological Seminary. I will need to write more about the experience this weekend, reflecting on the biblical significance of natures praise of God, our dualistic assumptions about soul and body, the ecological concerns raised by our discussions, and the social construction of wilderness. For now, though, I leave you with a few pictures to wet your appetite...

These first two were taken from Palisade Point, about 20 minutes north of Duluth. It was one of my favorite overlooks when I lived there. It used to be just a small, hidden turn off from the highway, but in recent years they have put in a little paved parking lot at the entrance to mark the way. There is still little to indicate what you will find if you venture up the one way road that winds up the hill and out to the point... I kind of like it that way.

At the top is another small parking lot, one small stone wall, and then a few trails that wander around the bluff. There are no guard rails, no warning signs. Climbers venture out here often in good weather to scale the face of the cliff. I love being able to walk up to the edge and look down or look out. Our stay here was too short, but a great surprise!

These two were taken on the rocks out behind Phil Anderson's cabin in Hovland, Minnesota. I'll post more pictures of this area later. For now, I'll just say how much fun it is to jump from rock to rock along the shoreline! Exploring, watching, listening...

There were several storms while we were at his cabin producing some great waves and white caps along the shore. The sound of the waves crashing on the rocks was a constant through out much of our time... It is one of the most relaxing sounds in the world to me, in spite of the fact that it is a result of a great force at work pounding and crashing against the rock.

I had a little trouble sleeping... not getting to sleep, but staying asleep once the sun came up in the morning. Many of you know that I am not a morning person, but in this setting I am! At the beginning of the week I was one of the earliest up most mornings, providing some quiet moments on the shore and some beautiful views of the mist rolling in off the lake as the rising sun hit the cold surface of the water.

The fog always reminds me of San Francisco... when people say that the fog is like a blanket, they are often talking about how it looks rolling in over the hills, covering and engulfing. To me, it also has the comforting effects of an old, familiar blanket that covers you and reminds you of home. I grew up with days that began in the midst of fog, freezing cold and damp... as the day rolled on, the fog rolled up the hill, the sun would burn it off throughout the day. While the morning belonged to the mist and the dampness, the sun would win the battle in the afternoons, claiming its territory once again and sending the temperatures soaring. We used to wear layers to class at UC Berkeley... sweats and jackets in the morning, gradually removing them throughout the day until we were laying on the grass in shorts and t-shirts in the afternoons (to study, of course!).

As I said, more later... but I hope these bring a bit of enjoyment for now!