Thunder won’t Shake Me
By June Roettger, Outdoor Skills Instructor
It’s hot at Sakatah Lake State Park today. Ninety-five degrees hot. I’m exhausting every muscle in my body to try to get back across Sakatah Lake against the current. The wind gusts have hit thirty miles per hour at this point. Halfway through, I surrender myself and the young I Can Paddle! participant in my canoe to Mother Nature’s will. We are not getting back to the boat launch. Not like this.
As we drift, an old memory rides on the wind and flows easily through my mind.
When I was very little, I attended summer camp. One day we were canoeing around Wirth Lake. I don’t remember much of our excursion, but I do remember the exact moment my panic set in. The wind picked up and we went drifting to the wrong side of the water, tears rolling down my face as I started to believe I was stuck here forever. I’d never see my family again.
I didn’t like boats after that.
But eventually, I got over it. So much so that I was now the designated adult in another version of the same situation. A worse one, I might add. Sakatah Lake is much larger than Wirth Lake, and the wind gusts could knock a small child off their feet. We have three kids to somehow transport across the lake. And my coleads and I are practically baking under the sun’s flame. But I am not scared. I’m just hoping that by some miracle, these kids will want to canoe again. I watch them closely for any signs of distress, the small child from my memory preparing to empathize.
But they are not phased. They are making conversation with one another, throwing rocks into the water, and eagerly hoping to make another attempt at traversing the lake. Filled with unbending resilience, our young I Can Paddle! participants stayed patient as we strategized and repeatedly failed to get back to shore. Not a tear was shed.
This display of strength from our prospective outdoor enthusiasts brings another story to my mind.
It was 11PM on an early summer night at Mille Lacs Kathio State Park during my first I Can Camp! program. Torrential rainfall spills over my tent. Thunder rips through the sky in a continuous rumble. Flashes of lightning periodically interrupt the complete blackness of the night. Was this the “light drizzle” we had warned our I Can Camp! group of just a few hours earlier?
As I drifted back to sleep, I had one question on my mind: “will our participants ever camp again after this?”
The next morning, with a damp ground as the only reminder of last night’s storm, everything is back to normal. After touching base with another Outdoor Skills Instructor, I found out that the kids in our group, by some miracle, slept through the storm. The adults don’t seem phased either. In fact, not one of my participants brings it up to me. Upon asking an older child what he thought of the storm, he simply said “it was weird.”
“Weird?” I thought. “What’s weird is that not one of these first-time campers seems to be as shaken as I was!”
Outdoor recreation is full of challenges given to us by Mother Nature to make us stronger. But humans, as entities borne from the earth and its elements, are creatures of immense resilience. Thunder may wake us from our deep slumber. Sweeping winds may push us far off course. But we won’t back down. We keep trying. The elements are strong. But the human spirit is stronger.
