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I’m two weeks into our month long break from classes, and I’m already beginning to pine just a bit for cardigan sweaters and new notebooks. I’ve always been a sucker for all things fall, but especially when they are attached to school (crisp library cards, the scent of erasers — you get the idea). My husband very smartly suggested that we hang on to this last bit of summer by taking a short Illinois camping trip. I’ve never been camping in Illinois before, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. My native land is Minnesota, where camping spaces are ample and full of adventure. I have to say that I found this trip to be spectacular and, in fact, I think I’d highly recommend outdoor adventures to folks new to Illinois (and graduate school) who are looking to escape the fast paced city for a couple days.

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My husband and I rustled up two friends and drove an hour and a half south to Kankakee River State Park. It was just far enough away to feel like we were escaping the city without really having to spend too much time on the highway (I’m an avid biker, so really any time in cars is a bummer for me). As we drove through the winding forest roads, I remembered a biking trip I once took with my class as a sixth grader. My dad volunteered to escort us on the 16 mile (round trip) tour of Elm Creek Park. I realized I have no idea if these sorts of adventures occur in Chicago other than urban biking clubs, but I imagine it’d be really fun to take city kids on some sort of canoe or backpacking trip.

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We were lucky enough to be in the woods the night of the meteor shower. To be honest though, just being able to look up and see a vast array of stars was an extremely magical thing. It’s very easy in the city to forget that stars are up there — that they exist at all. It was another moment in which I realized that, for city kids, the stars are a completely different experience. We’ve spent a lot of time in classes reflecting on how environment can affect what a student knows about their world before they are even in the classroom. It sounds silly, but in that moment I thought about how fulfilling it would be not just to teach an urban classroom about the stars, but also give them the motivation to seek out a starry night like this one.

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The next morning was spent paddling down the Kankakee river. With the drought, there were several moments when the river was so low that we needed to hop out of the canoe to push it forward. It was a simple act, climbing out of the canoe to get it moving again, but each time the river felt different. Sometimes it was the debris stopping the boat — huge rocks that had wedged it into place. At other times, I would climb out to find my feet slipping into clay, and I could see that the water was truly so shallow that the boat had completely beached itself. At other times, we found ourselves standing (painfully) on hundreds of tiny rocks that had seemed to stop the boat completely in its tracks. Each time, I thought about discussing with students the science behind what was happening to our boat and even ways to hypothesize how to get the boat moving again. (Should we move it towards or away from the rippling water? Does one person need to get out or does everyone?) And somehow, I found that even with a month off from grad school, I was still thinking about what I wanted to do in the classroom. It’s a good feeling to know that I enjoy what I’m doing so much that I’ve started to carry it with me everywhere.

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