The Unlikely Wanderer - Lynsey Van Nevel

Foreword

Finally, we have someone with actual credentials to lend some credibility to this site! In college, Lynsey worked for the University of North Dakota student newspaper and interned at our hometown paper The Pierce County Tribune, which is exactly two more newspapers than me.

Lynsey sent me a message a few weeks ago asking to write for Rogue Wanderer. She mentioned that she missed writing and thought this would be a great opportunity to get back into it. She has her own blog, but hasn't been writing much for it because there are no set deadlines. This seemed like a good challenge for me too since I'm not great about planning. This whole site did come to be because of my hatred for plans. Now I have a reason to plan out future articles so that she can have the deadlines she needs.

I look forward to the different perspective she can bring to this site because she lives in Georgia. Oh and also because she is a woman, a mother, a wife, a daughter, and has completely different life experiences than me. You can check out more of her work at LynseyVanNevel.blogspot.com. - Randy

The Unlikely Wanderer

I’m probably the person you would least expect to call a wanderer. When I booked a park for my son’s first birthday party, my sister laughed and said, “YOU booked an outdoor party?” I assured her that I had a contingency plan if it rained. She just looked at me and said, “But you and Trevor never go outside!”

It’s true. Nature and I have had an adverse relationship over the years. At 14, I was diagnosed with Polymorphic Light Eruption, which is the medical term for “mild sun allergy.” That diagnosis was followed up 12 years later with a diagnosis of “severe grass allergies.” It’s really like I was born to live in a bubble. Thanks to modern medicine, I can spend time outside on a regular basis. I wear sunblock daily (which we all should) and I buy Sudafed and Benedryl in bulk at warehouse stores. When I take these precautions, I can live a normal life outdoors. Until recently, I just haven’t chosen to go outside.

I was a teacher in one capacity or another for six years before my son was born in 2015. I voraciously studied teaching. I was constantly looking into new philosophies that I could incorporate into my teaching. I read about Ron Clark’s 55 Essential Rules, Gardener’s multiple intelligences theories, differentiated education, Montessori education, classical Christian education, unschooling, Waldorf education….If you could name an educational system, I probably read about it.

One thing that constantly stuck out to me was the importance of play and rest within education. Students need down time, and students need chances to explore the information on their own. They need chances to discover. They need to spend time in nature, away from technology, to really find peace in their souls.

It occurred to me this spring that if students benefit from this, shouldn’t adults, too? I realized that my current life of living in air conditioned comfort binge watching The Walking Dead probably isn’t the best long term plan for health and wellness, nor is it a great example for my son. I grew up on a cattle ranch in North Dakota. I had hundreds of acres of pastureland to explore with my sister. We spent many summer afternoons discovering things like shed deer antlers, enormous ant hills, and abandoned homesteads.

I want my son to have that kind of experience. However, we live in a suburb of Atlanta. Our quarter acre lot doesn’t afford much space for deer to wander in and shed their antlers. We have a few colorful birds that fly in to graze at our bird feeder and a wiley chipmunk that shimmies up the bird feeder a few times a day. Other than that, it’s pretty tame around here. We get pretty excited if we see a gecko or a stray cat in our yard.

My in laws came to visit in March, and they informed us that they would be staying at Chattahoochee Bend State Park. It was, shamefully, only my second visit to a state park in the 7 years we have lived in Georgia. While we were there helping them get their RV set up, we learned that we could get a state parks pass for $80 a year. We calculated that we would need to visit the parks 17 times in a  year to save money if we made the purchase. With many of Georgia’s state parks in close proximity to one another, it’s a very doable goal. It’s also the answer to my struggles to raise a wee wanderer on a quarter acre of a suburban subdivision.

In the next year, we are planning to utilize all the benefits we are entitled to as “Friends of Georgia State Parks.” That means free admission to all the parks, two nights of free camping, reduced priced lodging (in cabins, cottages, or yurts), discounted tickets on the SAM shortline railroad, and the tremendous opportunity to show my son that there is more to life than binge watching Daniel Tiger on Netflix in our living room.