Virtually outdoors
I hate the outdoors, but it happened to me one day during an adventure outdoors. I was about 11 years old and school had given us a map. We were supposed to check it out all during school time. This was for my outdoor education class. After studying the map for a bit inside a stairwell in-between classes and I began to panic. An upper classmate walked by and seemed to understand my panic. He said ‘Outdoor Ed?’ I nodded and and indicated for me to follow him. We went out the exit and walked down a sidewalk and turned left. He pointed saying ‘It’s at the bottom of those stairs.’
The ’stairs’ turned out to be indentations in the graveled dirt. It went along the back side of the school which is kind of tricky footing after a good rain. My upper classmate patted me on the back and left me. I traveled carefully along the dirt stairs. It lead to a big storage area, there were folding chairs set up at a few long tables. There were even what seemed like outdoor kitchen cabinets surrounding the area and a large blackboard secured to one of the cabinets. As I sat down, I noticed a bulletin board, secured to another cabinet, which had a colorful topographical map of Colorado on it. This didn’t appear to be an outdoor adventure, per se, but it was an adventure as a teacher, one I’ve never seen before, proceeded tell us all about Colorado. He started with the counties and gave us detailed descriptions of what was to be found or what was different about the county compared to the previous county he discussed.
I remember that day clearly, he took us on a virtual tour of Colorado, he told stories of pioneers of gold digging and of sheer adventure. It was like I was there in every aspect. Now that’s an outdoor adventure I’ll do any day.