Bringing more wonder to the world

 Naturalist Shania walks slowly in a circle, a western fox snake curled around her forearm. Four dozen second graders sit ‘criss-cross applesauce’ surround her, eyes wide, most mouths agape. 

“Do you want to touch it?” she asks. As if she didn’t already know the answer. 

I’m sitting just outside the circle, observing. My boy is in this class so it’s an excuse to join the school field trip. This is the last session of the day that included a trail hike, hide-and-seek in the woods, and cooking over a campfire. I’m fairly certain my boy still has marshmallow on his cheek.

To my left, a little girl is nearly shaking with anticipation. I’ve been watching her reaction to the ‘animal ambassadors’ Shania has introduced: a pair of box turtles that chowed down on mealworms in front of everyone, and now a four-foot-long fox snake we call Julius Squeezer. 

One at a time, the second graders rub their two fingers down Julius’s back, just as instructed. The girl I’m watching leans in, anticipating her turn, eyes getting wider with every step Shania takes closer. Then, finally it’s her turn. She might be shaking, I can’t tell. 

Dutifully, she reaches out and touches a creature from which entire horror movies are made. 

“Ohhhhh woooowwwww,” she exhales in an expression of pure wonder, as if she’d been holding her breath this whole time. She might have been. 

No fear. No trepidation. Just the sheer joy and wonder of truly experiencing something given to us by Creation. 

I smile. She’s likely to remember this experience for the rest of her life. 

In the last six weeks, we’ve hosted 18 field trips with a total of 90 school groups and 1,066 students. And there are a few more to go before school lets out for the summer and we shift into hosting summer camps. 

Not all of those students got to meet Julius. But they all got to experience something that Aldo Leopold called “natural, wild, and free.” They discovered that snakes aren’t that scary, that owls sometime roost in little depressions in cliff faces, that there are multiple ways to cook marshmallows over campfires, that some ducks nest in trees, and so much more. And that all of this wonder-inducing excitement happens right here in our community, in our backyards, and in parks they are welcome to visit any time and at no cost. 

There’s value in those experiences, though it’s impossible to measure it in dollars and cents. What’s the value in that second grader, twenty years from now, wanting to protect endangered species and sensitive habitats because of the wonder she found in seeing and touching a fox snake? Is that experience worth more than a Netflix documentary about “nature” in some form? I tend to think so.

Is the field trip more or less valuable than all the other ‘schooling’ a child can receive? What is the value of time in the woods anyway? What’s the value of exposure to that which can be scary, mysterious, uncertain? 

On account of my profession, I recognize I’m biased here. But vocation notwithstanding, my lived experience tells me these things have value. Were it not for exposure to the natural world at a young age, I’m not sure how I would have survived some of life’s struggles. When darkness and uncertainty clouded my soul, the woods were always there. I found that consistency grounding. Still do. 

I want that for others. And so we strive to bring a little more wonder to the world. 

Most schooldays, my boy’s response to “how was your day?” is a dismissive, “meh” or “fine” or “good.” 

Not the case with field trip day. For ten minutes he rambled on about how they got to play hide-and-seek in the woods, make s’mores, and “oh my god, mom, we got to touch a snake! A real one!”

I wonder if that girl next to me that day has stopped talking about it yet. 

Yesterday, a large black rat snake saw fit to sun itself on our front porch step. Boy almost stepped on it as he ran out of the house. Instead of freaking out, he examined it with wonder, mom and sister in tow. It’s still on the property somewhere. I hope it’s getting its fill of mice. I also hope it’s not in the house. 

There is so much more to education than just ‘learning’ in the traditional sense. There’s value in experience. In connecting with the natural world, unfiltered through pages and screens. In replacing “scary, mysterious, and uncertain” with “natural, wild, and free.”

That’s the education and experience we attempt to provide at the conservation department. And we’re grateful to the schools and organizations that allow us to bring a little more wonder to the world.