The Beginning of Pura Vida

Today was the first meeting of Vanessa's program, Pura Vida.  The children have just been released into the wilderness with Eric and Alfredo, and under a half-cloudy sky they are taking on their first adventure. 

This program is meant to create diversity within the park and an informed populace living outside the park.  I have looked at the schedule, and I think the lesson is there; but still it will take a certain exposure to both sides if kids who have lived in Jackson their whole lives are to understand what national parks do for the people of most American cities.  

I can't imagine growing up here.  I came from a flat suburban town and so I have developed a philosophy that one should grow up inside a blank slate with nothing but learning and social relationships to practice until reaching the days of adulthood when it is time to go see amazing things and meet lovely people.  Growing up in the midst of it all changes the whole game. 

As I ride my bicycle in the evenings, I look at the High School butte towering over the neighborhood schools and wonder about my best buddy from middle and high school days: how we would have leapt out of class and fled into that wilderness every single day if we had such a thing where we grew up.  Or maybe how we would have learned to stop seeing and thinking about these unique parts of a place so familiar to us.

It seems to me that these children must see past the splendor they are growing up in if they are going to appreciate it in true context.  They must be sent to Midlothian, Texas; they must be sent to Kansas, New York, and parts of Utah.  Then they will know who is coming to the Grand Teton National Park: and one look around these places will show them the air quality and the animals and the jagged horizons most people must do without every single day.

I know Alfredo will tell them about Texas, and the beautiful ocean stretching away from Corpus Christi.  His upbringing near some incomprehensibly vast monument of nature will be similar to their experience-- but who knows if any one of them has seen the ocean.  It may set their minds adrift a sea of possibilities.  I hope it does.