Posted by Alex Forbes on July 03, 2003 at 18:13:52 from 67.75.194.178 user Pitsligo.
In Reply to: Re: Bravo! (was: what would they be like today?) posted by Jonathan Labaree on July 03, 2003 at 17:02:22:
Jonathan,
Bravo for the coast of Maine, with all its educational potential! (Not to slight anywhere else, but I'm biased --and homesick.) And well done building your own peapod. Carver's Harbor, I assume?
I think your point about common sense safety when acting as an individual or as a family vs. over-regulated handrails when acting as a group is a point well made. Since 1989 I have worked, on and off, as logistical coordinator for my old high school's outdoor program, where a school-run 26-day backpacking trip, Outward Bound-style, is a graduation requirement. Take your pick, Death Valley or High Sierra. The safety --and liability-- issues I deal with daily are astounding. Most of the basics are things I do when I myself am out hiking, sailing, mountaineering, etc., but they have to be conducted on a scale far more intense than anything I would ever advise someone going out on their own. The lawyers, ever hovering, demand no less. And the kids aren't doing it on their own, so they tend to wear blinders; they're just along for the ride, rather than putting in that extra energy they get when they're inventing it as they go, so they need a bit more fending off than they might when they've got their eyes a bit more open. (And they're teenagers, which AR was wise enough not to write about.)
Sadly, the parents, who usually have no clue whatsoever what it is like to sleep anywhere but their goose-feather bed (with the sheet turned down so bravely, O!), are usually terrified. The kids, who are used to two showers a day and no cooking more strenuous than microwave popcorn, generally come through with flying colors. Raggle-taggle gypsies aren't a patch on kids who've been hiking in the back of beyond for three weeks.
Additionally, how much of our society's modern, insulated and air-conditioned lifestyle, has separated us --and therefore our kids-- from the pleasures of being uncomfortable? That first night of getting used to a haybag mattress? Having your tent blow down in a rainstorm? Has our excitment at the unusual become to subsumed by the discomfort at the unexpected?
Alex