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Permission Slip for Some Magic
Few things awaken the nostalgia genes in my hippocampus as much as the sight of a classroom of elementary schoolchildren walking side-by-side, sometimes even hand-in-hand, in a double line during a field trip.
I imagine you might feel the same way with such a vision conjuring up your own dormant field-trip memories.
A quick peek into the kaleidoscope of my Ohio boyhood includes field trips to a working maple syrup sugarhouse (maple cookie samples!); a donut bakery (fresh samples!); a nature walk along (and in!) a shallow shale-bottomed stream; a fire department; a hospital; an art museum and, even better, the Museum of Natural History (dinosaurs!).
Those seven field trips, a short list off the top of my head, equaled about seven weeks of learning inside the classroom. Indeed, field trips are worth all the headaches of signed permission slips, forgotten packed lunches, and student head counts that briefly come up short.
Robert Fulghum, author of “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten”, believes field trips are not just for grade-school kids, noting: “Only now have I finally realized that my life has been an unending field trip. And I have tried hard not to be a tourist. But to be an adventurer, a traveler, an explorer, a learner, and a pilgrim.”
Amen. In grade school, field trips are generally limited to being within a long walk or a short drive away. As adults, we can be explorers and learners without limits.
One of my most memorable “field trips” as an adult was when my wife and I were engulfed by a swarm of fourth graders at a bald eagle and wildlife museum in Haines, Alaska.
The resident expert on our national bird explained their A-to-Z’s: salmon is their favorite dish; adults weigh nine to 12 pounds; their flying speed is about 30 mph, but they can dive up to 100 mph; and their eyesight is so keen they can spot a fish from a full mile away.
Interesting stuff all, but because the captive bald eagles in the grand aviary didn’t cooperate and remained perched and half-hidden, the school children seemed unimpressed. They wanted more. So did I.
To the rescue came a young woman with a rescued owl on her leather-covered forearm. Next, she introduced us to an orphaned baby Dall sheep she was nursing back to health.
Afterward, outside as the school children boarded their bus – the teacher’s head count had apparently added up correctly – a smaller shuttle bus pulled into the parking lot. Instead of more kids, out stepped adult tourists.
The shuttle driver, a woman in her mid-20s, came into focus like a kindergarten teacher herself when she got out a portable wooden step and caringly helped an elderly passenger get down off the bus.
Being a “learner” in life’s “unending field trip” entails asking questions – so this I did. And I learned that Sarah came to Alaska all the way from Maine to be a white-water raft guide, of all things, during summers and drives the tourist shuttle the rest of the year.
I also learned that my teacher-like impression of her was not far off target for she spends her lunch break each weekday driving to a local elementary school to eat with the kindergarteners.
“No matter how my day is going, having lunch with the kids makes it a happy day,” Sarah told me. Not a bad life lesson for any of us to take away from a field trip.
One final field trip to share: Mrs. Larson, my second-grade teacher, took our class to the Columbus Dispatch newspaper. We got to see – and hear – the gargantuan printing press in action and in the newsroom we saw – and heard – a Teletype machine loudly spit out breaking news.
As mementos, we were given metal plate engravings of photographs that had already been printed in the newspaper.
If you do not believe in the magic of field trips, consider this: the engraving I brought home was a head shot of a Dispatch columnist.
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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.
Check out my new memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece”
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All that said, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus was a national treasure and to have it close shop brings a sense of loss. And if the biggest of the big tops folds up, it is hard to imagine the smaller circus companies surviving much longer either.
In 1948, the In-N-Out in Baldwin Park is believed to have become the nation’s first fast-food restaurant to have a “drive-thru” window featuring an intercom for ordering. However, an even more historic “drive-thru” was created seven decades earlier when a tunnel was cut through a giant sequoia in Calaveras Big Trees State Park.
I knew my friend had a kind heart, but the depth of her empathy more fully revealed itself this past Christmas when she surprisingly turned down my invitation to join us for dinner. She is a single mom whose college-student son was out of state visiting his girlfriend’s family, and we didn’t want her to be alone.
Mr. E knew what his troupe was feeling. Before the curtain rose, he called the cast and crew together and told them this: “Theater is ephemeral and fleeting, like a dream. It doesn’t last forever. Each performance is unique and sacred. That is what makes it bittersweet – but that is also what makes it beautiful.”
Give the world another John Glenn, Prince, David Bowie, Arnold Palmer and Muhammad Ali – well, as near facsimiles as possible – to fill the voids they left behind this year.