by Jess Evans
May 11, 2018
While I worked at Kentucky State Parks in the early 2010s, the book “Last Child in the Woods” by Richard Louv was all the rage. It motivated a lot of park districts to think about how to get children to “play” outdoors again. I found it interesting how the author described the modern childhood experience as moving away from nature. I grew up in the 1980s on a small farm in Colorado, where I encountered nature on a daily basis. During our summers, my siblings and I built forts with sticks, waded in the creek pretending to be on an adventure down the Amazon River, battled aliens that resembled our cows (of course, they just eyed us lazily and continued to chew), and turned our Colorado home into thousands of different places imaginary and real. The natural world around us was the source of our play and our imagination. The idea of not experiencing nature is foreign to me.
Richard Louv gives a good description of what “experiencing nature” is. A young boy who rarely spent time outdoors explained to him that when he visited a canyon in the Southwest with his family, they were caught in a rain storm and had to take shelter under a rock overhang. The boy realized what nature was at that point.
Thinking back on that story, I realize that experiencing nature is one more reason why I really like adventure racing. If it is raining, snowing, sunny and hot, or windy and cold, you are out in nature. You are pushing your body forward through the elements. Two examples come to mind from my recent Cowboy Tough race experience in Wyoming. We were riding along the road on our bikes and could see a storm approaching quickly from our right. As the wind picked up to scary speeds, we crossed the road, laid down our bikes and huddled behind a large sagebrush. The rainstorm was quick but large rain drops splashed around us. We sat in our sagebrush shelter listening to the storm. As soon as it passed, the wind died down and the sun peeked out from the clouds. We were back on our bikes. The second incident occurred early the next morning before the sun came up. Another rainstorm set in on us. The wind picked up again. This time we remained on our bikes. The sandy path we were traveling on soon turned to mud that stuck to everything. We could no longer ride our bikes. We got off the bikes and began pushing them through the sagebrush next the trail to clean off the sticky mud. Pushing the bikes on the trail was more trouble than it was worth. The rain whipped around us as we trudged through the sagebrush, stopping periodically to make sure we were on the right track. Lightening struck in the distance, lighting up the clouds around it for a brief moment. As the sun came up, the rain clouds drifted on, and the arid Wyoming air swooped in to dry us and the mucky road. I said to Shawn, “I hope Doug took a picture of that sunrise.”
Those are only two examples of the many times I have experienced nature. For me, I like feeling the natural elements. I will even tolerate briars, with some grumbling, knowing that I am experiencing nature. The energy of nature flows through my veins and keeps me excited about it. I am experiencing the world as it is with all its hardships and beauty – that is nature and that is adventure racing.
