Feeling The Pull

Wrote this as part of a send of show for MB, also a podcast Your Stories.

I was born and raised in Rockford, IL about an hour and a half west of Chicago. Over the years it has periodically been, unjustly from my perspective, on various lists for worst cities in america. Say what you want about many of it’s aspects but Rockford has one of the best municipal park systems in the country. There are seven major parks and countless small neighborhood ones with playground equipment and sports fields scattered throughout the city, there are also a couple large county maintained forest preserves in the area. Taken together they offer substantial recreation, adventure, and beauty.

Growing up I was a chubby kid the subject of no small amount of ridicule and cruelty. But every summer I was able to escape my archetypal role when I went to camp. The Rockford Park District offered a variety of types of camps for all age groups and I attended them all. Day camp, sleep away camp, backpacking, and bike. I loved them all and what they all had in common were two things. At them I could be whoever I wanted to be. I brought into into them no baggage, no history. I could make friends easily because all of us were working from square one. The second thing was that they all involved, no surprise, being in nature. And I discovered a deep resonance with the forests and hills, the rivers and lakes that I spent my summers in. I felt at home in the woods, I felt comfortable, there was a time it was one of the only places I did. And as time went on I found I had an affinity for it- hiking, canoeing, making a fire and cooking over it- I wasn’t a boy scout but I developed skills.

When I aged out of going to camp I became a camp counselor and that summer job along with the measured relief of high school opened up my social circle and got me out of my shell. I was a camp counselor for seven years, all through high school and for the bulk of college. Those was some of the best summers of my life. Stinking like campfire and bug spray, arguing with 8 year olds about what was for lunch, driving the tractor with 30 screaming kids in the trailer behind me.

In college after a summer of working at Camp Conestoga some friends and I, instigated by our love of the outdoors, planned a trip west for a little national parks tour. We left in the afternoon and drove all night. It was dawn when we came into The Badlands National Park in South Dakota, the sky was a screaming yellow and all around us were these beautifully alien mud/rock formations spreading out to the horizon. We stood there in awe. It was breathtaking, we were silenced by the splendor and vastness of Mother Nature. And for a moment we were part of her grace. And that feeling is something I’ve chased after ever since.

After the Badlands we went to Yellowstone then the Rocky Mountains National Park where we hiked Pike’s peak. On our way down fueled by youthful idiocy and THC we began to jog down the mountain, then run, letting gravity pull us forward gaining momentum as we corned switchbacks and lept boulders. And for a good ten minutes it was pure exhilaration, we were conquering the mountain, we were young, we were invincible. But like Icarus, my hubris was inevitably punished. I lost my balance and fell, crashing and sliding on the gravel path. The camera I wore on a shoulder strap was broken and my arms and legs were scraped and bleeding. I was hurt and I was embarrassed but I popped up and my friends washed me off with the water from their canteens and we finished the decent at a more stately pace.

Since that first trip I’ve been the Glacier National Park, the Grand Tetons, the Grand Canyon, Shenandoah, and many state and local parks all across the country. I just got back a couple days ago from a trip with my girlfriend to New Mexico the major reason for our visit was to go to Carlsbad Caverns and the White Sands National Monument. Which we did and both were spectacular.

All this to say nature is one of my great passions. Wherever I go I seek out the closet park and I hike through it. It gives me an inexpressible joy and a deep satisfaction. I return to it again and again and again. I place my time, energy, and money on the altar of the Earth Mother. And I encourage you to find your passions whatever they may be, to pursue them if you’ve found them, and if you already are I wish you good luck and godspeed.

If some day pride gets the better of you, and the gods justly bring you low, simply pick yourself up and continue down the path because around the next turn, the next bend, is the next opportunity, the next adventure.