Photo by Robbie Francis, FrancisFilmworks.com
From An Indoor Classroom to the Great World Outdoors
To catch a fish, I had to think like a fish. That realization led me from teaching math to a new career as an outdoor guide.
I grew up hiking and camping with my family, but four years ago I was staring down the possibility of turning 40 without ever having caught a fish. To help me avoid that midlife crisis, my wife arranged a day of trout fishing guided by a work colleague. From that day I was, well, hooked.
Soon afterwards, I learned to shoot a .22 caliber rifle with help from a new friend. The next logical step for me after catching trout for my lunch and honing my marksmanship skills was hunting small game. Within a year I had successfully bagged and cooked a few squirrels from public game lands near my home. Free-range, acorn-fed squirrel may be the most underrated meat in America.
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Photo by Robbie Francis, FrancisFilmworks.com
From An Indoor Classroom to the Great World Outdoors
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Photo by Robbie Francis, FrancisFilmworks.com
From An Indoor Classroom to the Great World Outdoors
Fishing and hunting dropped me into a mindset of inhabiting the woods and water rather than just visiting: Which bend in the stream slowed the water perfectly and provided a submerged log for protection? I learned the squirrels’ daily schedules. In the hour after dawn they left their home trees and worked their way through the forest undergrowth and overstory traveling uphill. Then all was quiet throughout the day. In the evening they returned back downhill and scrambled into their trees for the night.
I enjoyed my new pursuits on weekends and holidays, but my job as a high school math teacher put a damper on trekking around outside with a rifle or a fishing pole. Then came the upheaval of 2020. The pandemic lockdown of that spring changed my life and career as it did for so many other teachers, but in a surprising way.
On a Friday that March something strange was in the air at my school, comparable to the biggest impending snow day ever. COVID restrictions were pending. The faculty sent the students home that afternoon with fully-charged laptops and instructions to check their email … just in case. That was the last time we were together in person for six months. For the rest of that school year, I only saw my students’ faces in our online class meetings.
Teaching through a webcam to a collection of two-dimensional avatars was exhausting and largely ineffective. Thankfully, my school’s administration was gracious in adjusting our schedule to allow for a healthy balance of on-screen and off-screen time. For the first time in my 20-year teaching career I slowed down to look out the window and notice spring unfolding around me. The pandemic forced us all to examine and adjust how we engage with the world. I stepped outside.
April is prime fishing season. My weeks quickly became a hodgepodge of teaching algebra online until lunch, then getting hip-deep in a river as quickly as possible for the unmistakable tug of a big trout on my line. My first turkey season also arrived that spring. I woke before sunrise on a math-free morning and got a big tom to march within bow range in my yard. After cleaning the fresh bird to provide a month of dinners for my family I hurried inside, logged into Zoom, and taught the sophomores statistics.
The time I spent slipping quietly through the oaks and pines, stumbling upon turtles and copperheads transformed me in a way that decades of hiking never did. I had spent most of my summers since college working as a camp counselor leading children in outdoor activities. But stalking fish and game requires stillness, silence, and a depth of melting into the surroundings that was entirely new to me. Stepping softly through streams in search of fishing holes, I have encountered minks and great blue herons. A river otter once glided underwater right past my feet. Families of bears, gaggles of turkeys, and even a trio of bobcats have gone about their business directly beneath me as I sat unnoticed in a tree stand 15 feet above. Owls have swooped in and perched on limbs in front of me, holding their breakfast tight in their talons.
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Photo by Robbie Francis, FrancisFilmworks.com
From An Indoor Classroom to the Great World Outdoors
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Photo by Robbie Francis, FrancisFilmworks.com
From An Indoor Classroom to the Great World Outdoors
With each experience moving and sitting mindfully in a wild place I settled into a new role. I was a neighbor, and I belonged. Hikers walking and talking their way through the woods on nearby trails showed me that humans are extremely loud. I intentionally gave myself the time and space to still my body and mind and become part of the scenery.
The first COVID school year wrapped up, and a nervous summer passed. As the next fall arrived a strange truth took hold in me. It grew like a sapling reaching for the sun. The “real” world of emails, textbooks, grades, deadlines, and all the accompanying anxiety felt increasingly artificial. I lost sleep anticipating another weekend inside, writing student report card comments, yet I knew that a mere hundred yards away there was a beautifully intricate and balanced system playing itself out. Beetles and lizards were engaged in life-and-death struggles under rocks. Fungi were decomposing every fallen tree into rich Appalachian soil and passing nutrients and chemical signals from tree to tree along their underground mycorrhizal networks. By comparison, planning a remote learning experience for solving quadratic equations lacked a certain richness.
I knew I was teaching my last year of school. After a career in traditional education I turned to teaching kids different lessons outside. I started a guided hiking company, Asheville Outdoor Experiences, to help families catch a first-hand glimpse of the kaleidoscope that unfolds every day in the natural world.
While I dearly love students’ “aha” moments that result from a well-taught math lesson, it feels equally important to help people find a personal connection with the outdoors. Kids get to identify and sample wild edible plants, meet salamanders face-to-face, and perhaps even snag their first wild trout from a mountain stream. Maybe someday they will find their way out again and welcome whichever wild neighbor they might meet around the next bend.