Jamestown Elementary School (JES) returned to the Cal-Wood Education Center September 15 and 16 for their annual overnight outdoor education field trip. The students were quickly introduced to the rigors of the outdoors experience. Dropped off in the lower parking lot by their parents, they were instructed by their teacher, Patrick Griffin, to carry all their gear including backpacks, sleeping bags, overnight essentials, and a day hiking bag approximately a quarter mile uphill to the lodging area. The initial task of hauling all their gear is accentuated by the altitude, which at 7800 feet provides a formidable natural challenge. The students had been well prepared, as their gear appeared to be packed and streamlined, perhaps tipped off by the many years of Jamestown students undergoing this annual rite of passage.

The lead counselor for this year’s class was a familiar one. Cameron Cook was assigned to Jamestown last year, and was assisted this year by Brittany Roy, who has been at Cal- Wood for a couple of weeks and was learning from Cook. “Cameron and I have actually worked together at other Outdoor Ed facilities, I always learn from him; he’s an excellent instructor,” she said.

“I don’t usually get to encounter groups again after they’ve left here…” said Cook, “so getting to work with these students again and see that they actually took things away from their previous experience and would bring up things that they had learned, reminding me of things that may have forgotten, was super rewarding.”

The familiarity did not end there. Cal-Wood maintains housing for instructors in Jamestown, so the students have opportunities to interact with the instructors in town as well. “I’ve had them walk up to me and be like, ‘hey camera-man!’ and I’ll remember them.”

After the students gathered and organized their sleeping spaces, the activities began. The instructors led the students on a hike around the grounds, leading games and giving background information about the plants and animals that call Cal- Wood and the mountain ecosystem home.

Cal-Wood had installed a greenhouse system in November 2019. Angie Busby, land manager along with her partner, Pat Kutscher, were the driving forces behind the development. After the students finished their lunches, they were on hand to give the students a tour of the greenhouse as well as the vermiculture system, even letting the kids pick fresh vegetables from the raised beds that populate the nearly 70’ x 30’ greenhouse area.

The students then went on a hike to the archery range, where they shot arrows at targets. This was a hit with the students, as they homed in on the targets and even got to take aim at a model of an antelope.

They walked further into the ecosystem, sitting in the forest and listening to the lessons that Cook and Roy had in their curriculum. The forest at Cal-Wood is Ponderosa pine, spruce, and fir, has remained untouched except for the areas that were cleared by the families that settled there, or the Indigenous people before them.

After the day of hiking the kids settled into the lodge for dinner and activities, as well as a night hike.

Adrienne Gosbee, a mother of two children attending this year’s field trip, was an overnight chaperone this year and had enjoyed the experience. “It went really well,” she said, “everybody loved the night hike, and everyone was tuckered out by the end of the night.”

Erin Plum, the school programs coordinator for Cal-Wood, and a part time field instructor, spoke about the progress they have made.

“We’re really grateful that this past spring and this fall things are definitely returning back to normal for us in terms of our capacity with programming. A lot of our schools are returning for the first time since COVID, so we’re really grateful to be getting a huge diversity of students.”

She explained that students from Denver, Boulder and other cities along the Front Range come to Cal- Wood, as well as local students, and are exposed to the mountains and nature programs that are presented as part of the “Cal-Wood experience.”

This includes the scar from the Cal-Wood fire that damaged the property in October 2020. “We are trying to see the silver lining in terms of having our burn scar be a huge fire ecology lab for the students coming out.”

Plum explained that many schools want to come to the Cal-Wood burn area to get a hands-on learning experience, which has proven to be a powerful educational tool. Cal-Wood is currently producing a fire ecology curriculum in cooperation with many groups of research teams and other interests.

“A lot of different groups are getting to use the space to learn, and in some instances do some cutting- edge research looking at fire recovery, looking at erosion into streams… so we’re trying to engage lots of different parts of our community.”

Cal-Wood Education Center continues to be a leading organization, opening the outdoors and the natural world to students of diverse backgrounds, and lending its resources to the communities trying to understand and develop better ways of working with our natural world and its inhabitants.