And while school sessions come to a close, Mother Nature has started to call. In Pennsylvania, the freezing rain of Mother's Day weekend is countered by a mid-May heat wave. The frost and the furious weather of a Keystone State spring. You can get hypothermia and heat stroke within the same 7-day forecast!
In the book There's No Such Thing As Bad Weather, a determined mom makes a great case for embracing the elements...all of them. Life is not sunshine and rainbows. I think we all learned that over the course of the last 12+ months. Life is sometimes overcast and rain boots, yet treasures can be found in the clouds and in the puddles.
In Stackhouse Park this spring, I got to watch my 6-year-old participate in her first bridging ceremony with the Girl Scouts. A small community army gathered at the park's central pavilion. Deprived of social interaction for what felt like all of eternity, this Girl Scouts ceremony felt like Woodstock. There were people everywhere. Any by everywhere, I mean in the same field. I've never been more excited to lay on a blanket by other humans.
I was proud of my daughter for being a part of the ceremony. She looked official. She looked ready to take on the world. We listened to a fellow Girl Scout, an impressive young lady, describe her experience within the organization. Her speech was her bridge to adulthood; a final thank you, a fantastic message to young people, and an attention grabber to the adults. In summary, overcome the odds. Be yourself. Be grateful.
Her words inspired me to return to the park. This time, to held build a trail, a bridging of sorts in the woods. Stackhouse Park volunteers are beginning to assemble to build a connecting trail for mountain bikers. With the Inclined Plane shut down for repairs, wilderness warriors are attempting a reroute. Definitely not as luxurious as riding a monstrous vehicle up a mountainside yet it will be an alternate climb nonetheless. I was one of three volunteers that day. One guy was the brains. One guy had the chainsaw. I was the guy that cleared debris. Every team needs a debris clearer. I don't have the brains for navigation nor the safety skills to operate a chainsaw but I can chuck wood. I can break branches. I can pretend to know about tools. Bottomline - the thing that brought us three together that morning - we were building a path. Simple yet requires a lot of hard work and dedication and also true for anyone who teaches - thank you educators of 2020-2021, the silliest syllabus ever, the path of most resistance, the most technologically maddening year in the history of mankind...
And before us, there were the dinosaurs. There was no Zoom in the Mesozoic Era. You didn't have time to TikTok because tick tock you'd be eaten by a velociraptor if you let your guard down. Our whole family attended Dino Day at Stackhouse Park and I happily returned to the dinosaur days. The instructor - my former teacher and neighbor - brought us all the way back to when the dinosaurs walked our world. His enthusiasm for dinos is infectious. You know you are good when you wow the crowd with fossilized poop.
There you have it, 2020-2021 school year...it will one day be remembered as the fossilized poop of academia. We - kids, parents, teachers, communities - made it work. It was a war path. The dinosaurs are extinct and we are still here. Find a path and offer up some gratitude.
To teachers everywhere, thank you.
