Field Biology

When I was in fifth and sixth grades, there was a great summer school course offered through the public schools. I took “Field Biology” for two summers in a row. I don’t know how the school district afforded it, but they allowed a whole school bus filled with kids to take this class. We used several classrooms and had a variety of instructors.

Early each weekday morning in June and part of July, we would arrive at the elementary school (not our usual school, we had to get ourselves to a different campus than we were used to). The teacher would show slides. We learned scientific vocabulary words – and saw photos of whatever sort of “specimens” the teachers expected us to encounter that week. I remember learning about everything from the different types of coastal redwoods (Sequoia Gigantia and Sequoia Sempivirens…see, I still remember), to the names of things found in tidepools, to wildflowers, to birds, snakes, and lizards. But learning these names was not the best part of the class.

If we spent Monday learning all about tide pools, then on Tuesday, we would head to Half Moon Bay. We’d load up our buses and take our little field journals and bag lunches and we would explore Northern California. We rode various distances - not short rides – to arrive at our field sites. We went everywhere. I mean we went to Foothill Park, Half Moon Bay, Bodega Bay, Point Reyes, Point Lobos, Mount Tamalpias, Mount Diablo, Muir Woods, you name it. At each place, we would draw pictures of the items on our “list” for the day or we would keep a tiny sample – of leaves and flowers and grasses.

As we took our long rides and explored hot hilltops, foggy coastline, and shady woods, we became admirers and intimate observers of nature. We learned that if you stick your finger gently into a sea anemone, it will close and “stick” to your finger. That is how they feed. We learned that if you have a big fire in a redwood forest, it almost always comes back. Redwoods are very resilient. We learned about the various types of birds that live near water and how they survive and we learned why rattlesnakes rattle.

Then, at the end of the term, the course would culminate in a week of camping and hiking. The first year, we went to Big Basin. I remember I loved it and had a good time. But that’s all I remember. The second year, we went to Yosemite. Honestly, for a nominal public summer school fee, they were able to bus us off and let us camp and explore Yosemite for a week. It was unbelievable.

I know I had a crush on some kid from another school and that was interesting. It was a diversion and added a dimension to the week. But, the experience, in sixth grade, of a week of camping, hiking, and exploring Yosemite was just mind blowing. We hiked to the top of peaks. We hiked trails that took us to the base of spectacular waterfalls. We hiked and hiked and hiked. God bless those teachers. I can’t imagine what a responsibility it must have been to shepherd a group that size in a National Park.

At the end of the week, at the last campfire, I got some kind of award for being the “best trooper” of the group. It was a dubious honor. It started when I had tripped on a tree root sticking out of the ground near my tent when barefoot. We had been told not to go barefoot. Not wanting to get in trouble or to be left behind, I sort of rinsed off this giant chunk of skin that had been gouged out of my heel and taped it back up there with a bandaid. On every hike we went on, I was also getting huge blisters, but didn’t want to give up hiking, so I didn’t mention it. I developed blisters upon blisters upon blisters.

At lunch time, on about the fourth day of hiking and camping, I remember taking my boots off because I was in pain – just to give them some air. Unbeknownst to me, the instructor was standing behind me. When he saw the state my feet were in, I remember the shock and concern on his face. I seem to remember several adults with first aid kits attending to my feet for ten or fifteen minutes. Then we hiked the additional five or six miles back to camp. For some reason, they were impressed with my lack of complaining. That trait has not necessarily been a good one for me over the years, but it was apparently an asset in this setting.

I will never forget the beauty we encountered that week. From Half Dome to Bridal Veil Falls, we explored. Yosemite has changed a great deal over the years. You now have to take shuttles around the park and can’t explore in solitude the way we were able to. One has to share the park with hundreds of other nature lovers. When we were there, it was still a quiet majestic place. It is a good reason to be glad to be over fifty years of age. I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything.

The experience I had at the age of twelve, I’m sure helped to inspire me to work in the Tetons when I was eighteen, the Rockies when I was twenty. It probably was a formative experience that caused me to push my own children out the door when they decided to blaze trails for the Minnesota Conservation Corps, to explore the great boundary waters, or to embark on their own great adventures. So, wherever those teachers are now, wherever the school administrators are who decided to set the money aside in the budget to allow us to do this, I say, “thank you.” Thank you and here’s hoping there are more teachers and administrators like you long into the future.