A Learning Ourtdoor Experience

My kids were just being kids. Running, jumping, yelling and hollering. They were having a good time in the woods with The Old Man.

The Old Man (me) let them get some of their pent-up energy out of their system. It was a snowy day in midwinter, and we were at the edge of an small clear-cut.

Stumps rose three feet out of the snow, and it was time for their first outdoor lessons. I could tell when they were starting to get tired from all their activity, and decided to pull the plug on the noise.

It was time to teach them something, and it was time for them to learn something about the outdoors they had taken for granted."OK," I said, "pull up a stump. It's time for a lesson about the outdoors. I want you to be quiet and listen. No more talking or goofing around."

"What are we going to listen to?" one kid asked.

Stacey Richey with a small northern pike.

"I want you to sit very still, and listen to whatever you hear nearby," they were told. "Listen for two minutes and tell me what you've heard."

A big deal was made of looking at my wrist watch, and it didn't take long for them to begin to fidgit, make silly faces at each other, and when I stood up, the kids went back to listening.

"Time is up, kids," I said, looking at my oldest child. "Kim, being the big kid of the Richey gang, "you go first and the other kids will follow. Tell me what you heard."

"Nothing," she said. I asked Stacey, then David, and lastly, Guy. None of them had heard anything. That spoke volumes about what they didn't hear.

"This is not good,"  I said. "Now we'll have to do it all over again, and keep doing it until you learn how to listen. There are all kinds of sounds around us, and I want you to hear and identify them, if possible. Two more minutes, and listen good this time."

Doing it the second time was the trick. The kids figured they could con The Old Man the first time, and then go back to having fun. Once they learned they would continue this exercise of sitting on a cold wintry stump until they heard something, they started to pay attention and listen.

"OK, Kim, what did you hear this time?"

The kids began learning about using the five senses.

"I heard a bird hoot two or three times, and I could hear cars out on the road driving by."

"I heard the wind in the trees as it made a soft noise," Stacey said, pointing away. "There was some kind of rustling in the brush over there but I don't know what it was."

"I heard a rooster pheasant," David said, because he'd gone pheasant hunting and knew what the cackle of a flushing rooster sounded like.

Guy was the youngest but he had grasped the idea of listening. "I heard my pants rubbing against this snow-covered stump, and I could hear clumps of snow fall off it as I moved around."

That was a good start. Each of the kids admitted hearing some of the things the other kids had heard. I explained that what Kim had heard was an owl hooting, and that the cackling sound David had heard was a rooster pheasant taking flight. Each of them had heard the wind soughing through the trees, and the rustling Stacey had heard was a fox squirrel scampering for cover.

That was just the first of many times I took my children out during the four seasons for some outdoor lessons that related to their five senses. We did the listening thing one more time with even better results.

Space out lessons on the five sense and allow the children to learn.

Then we did one of seeing. By now, they had gotten the knack of using their five senses. They saw flying birds, geese calling overhead, squirrels chattering in the trees, the wind moving the branches, weeds moving in the breeze, a deer track in the soft earth and many others.

The episodes of taste came during the summer, and it just so happened that we conveniently stopped for this lesson near some blackberry and raspberry bushes. I cautioned them away from poison ivy berries, and taught them what to look for.

The "touch" lesson was easier than I first thought. They discovered the roughness of cedar and oak bark, the smoothness and fragility of birch bark, and the serrated edges of aspen leaves.

The toughest one of all was somewhat prearranged. A skunk had been hit that evening several hundred yards down the road on a foggy autumn evening. Scent hangs heavy in the air in the fog, and they quickly identified what it was by the scent. We moved upwind until we saw that flattened and stinky skunk.

We next moved farther upwind to avoid the skunk smell and my neighbor had his fireplace going. I asked what that smell was, and they sniffed the air from upwind of us, and pronounced it "wood smoke."

The kids learned about animal life and death on these hour-long forays into the fields and woods. They learned to use their five senses for something other than finding the dinner table with their nose. Soon they could identify the sounds and smells of nature, and all that goes with it.

Mentoring my grand-daughter to archery deer hunting.

Now, I've also mentored my 23-year-old grand-daughter Jessica to the ways of the wild. She has taken up bow hunting, and had a perfect chance at 10 yards at a doe last fall but didn't shoot.

"I wasn't ready to kill something just yet," she said, and described how beautiful the doe looked. I was proud of her for admitting it.

She'd learned a lesson by not shooting, and she'd been taught other lessons that she will long remember. Kids are good students if learning is made to be fun rather than simply an idle chose they must endure.

Spend time now with your children, and teach them about the outdoors. It's a gift they will cherish when they grow older, and with luck, they will take their kids out for an hour to learn what they five senses can teach them. That can be a great start for a long love affair with nature.

Posted via email from Dave Richey Outdoors