This is a guest post by Brad Parker, 7th grade teacher at J.C Locke Elementary School in Chicago and the first of a two-part installment. 

Last summer, my brother Josh (who is also a history teacher) was awarded a grant from an organization named Global Explorers that specializes in helping people connect to their environment in more “unique” ways.  His prize? A fully paid trip to Peru to explore the Amazon – oh yeah, and 10 fully paid trips for his students from Curie High School!  At first, I was proud of him, excited for him, and undoubtedly jealous. 10 days in the Amazon?! Imagine the things to do and see, people to meet, experiences to have. But then I realized the even cooler part about it; he’d be taking 10 students along with him. I wondered what kinds of experiences those kids would have, being Chicagoans their whole lives, most of them never having left the city, let alone the state of Illinois. How would it be spending 10 days in a place that you would normally only see in the pages of National Geographic and in movies about dinosaurs?

I guess Josh and I grew up spoiled. I don’t mean spoiled with toys and the newest Nintendo games (Super Mario Bros. was big back then!), but spoiled with the outdoors. My family made it a point every summer to take vacations to the beautiful National Parks all across America. At the time, Josh and I saw it as an opportunity to eat a lot of junk food as we drove across the country in the backseat of our parent’s car (fighting 90% of the time), and to run ahead on hiking trails, swim in lakes and rivers, climb any and everything we could find as our parents’ screams echoed below “not too high!” We met “mountain folks” who ate heavily and laugh heartily, spied on cool wildlife like black bears in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee and bighorn sheep in the snow-capped peaks of Montana, and someway, somehow, we forgot that TV existed. Life was good, and it was good enough that we could rely on the outdoors and each other as enough “entertainment” to get us through the day. No phones, no TV, no texting, and in a weird way, life seemed better. Less seemed like more.  Going out really seemed like going in.

When Josh called me up and invited me and 10 Green Team members to join him and his 10 students for a Saturday field trip at Ted Stone Forest Preserve in Hodgkins, I immediately knew this was something we had to do. Josh and the Curie students had adopted Ted Stone Preserve and vowed to make at least monthly trips to work on preserving and helping the forest become healthier. Not to get too science-heavy on you here, but they basically work on cutting down an invasive specie of tree called buckthorn. What that means is that it is a specie of tree that is not native to the area, and that it dominates the habitat’s resources, both sun and water, making the survival of other plant life and biodiversity nearly impossible. So our mission: seek and destroy the buckthorn! Armed with handsaws and loppers (think of massive fingernail clippers that could take a finger off in a flash!), we set out to “save” this particular corner of forest from the buckthorn and open it’s doors once again to the plants and trees that originally called it home.

The students had a blast. The amount of work done, the amount of enthusiasm towards getting out there and making a difference, was spreading like wildfire the entire morning. Speaking of fire, we burned the buckthorn we cut in three massive bonfires with different people constantly feeding it by throwing in a branch or two. New friendships were made, an incredible time was had by all, and the students felt a new connection to nature – a connection that made it clear that our personal actions do affect our world.

The coolest part about the experience? For some of those 10 lucky Locke students, this was their first outdoors experience, ever. I didn’t know how to react when one of the students told me this was her first time in the woods. I wanted to tell her how cool the Rocky Mountains of Colorado were, and how incredible it feels to stand on the top of a mountain that you just climbed. But I remembered a great quote from one of my favorite outdoors writers, John Muir, once said, “To city-dwellers, nature in magazines is like pictures of bread to the hungry. I can write only hints to incite good wanderers to come to the feast.” Translation: there is no way to describe how amazing a good-old fashioned experience in nature can be unless you have one yourself. And when you have one, and when you learn to love the outdoors and love our planet, then you’ll want to protect it.

My hopes for you? Maybe this story will be the breadcrumb that encourages you to check out the outdoors. Maybe one of the ten students that went on this trip will inspire you to seek out a similar opportunity. Maybe one day you’ll be standing in a beautiful old-growth forest, or on a rocky mountain top, feeling the sun’s energy, listening to the sweet call of the wild, letting the wind play with your hair, becoming one with Mother Nature. When you do have this experience, you won’t even notice, but “your cares will fall off like autumn leaves” (another Muir favorite).

Maybe, just maybe, you can one day escape the concrete streets of Chicago and discover for yourself where the sidewalk ends and where the cell-phone reception dies… maybe you’ll discover that’s where you will really come alive.