rain rain rain

a few nights ago us naturalists experienced something at work that we had never experienced before: POURING RAIN ON NIGHT HIKE.

now, let me just tell you that night hike, by itself, with no weather complications, is hard. i mean, you have a bunch of 5th and 6th grade kids walking behind you, most of who have never even hiked in the woods before, let alone in the dark. and they are FREAKING out. this is the night that us naturalists think to ourselves "how in the world can a child ask that many questions?" so then we proceed to send out these kids who are practically peeing their pants in fear to walk by themselves in the dark on their solo walk and we act like its just no big deal, i mean, we do this every week. after the solo walk we usually spray these kids all over with glow stick juice that we have retrieved from breaking apart the glow sticks. then we put mints in their hands and tell them to wrap their fingers tightly around it because this "thing" reacts with the air and if the air gets to it the cool magical thing we're about to do won't work. we tell them to put it in their mouths and chew really hard really fast with their mouths open. "triboluminescence" is basically the light that is created when material is pulled apart (in this case chewed) through the breaking of chemical bonds in the material. so the kids see this crazy blue spark in each other's mouths and freak out. it's fun. you can do this too! just buy some lifesaver mints, get in a dark room and prepare to be amazed.



all this to say, night hike has become such a normal thing for us. i forget what a big deal it is for these little guys. we usually always have great weather for night hike, with maybe a few weeks with no stars because of the clouds, but for the most part we have pretty smoothly run wednesday nights. but this past week it was a downpour of unexpected rain. the kids had pretty good attitudes about it, which was encouraging to us as naturalists because we did NOT. i set out with my kids and did all the normal night hike stuff, just in the pouring rain. they could barely hear me teaching over the rain pelting our rain jackets and ponchos. i set up my solo walk the way i normally do, telling them my story of my own personal solo walk experience when i came down to mount hermon for training before outdoor science started, how i was already so proud of the things they had accomplished that week and the fears they had overcome. i told my counselors to send them one minute apart and then me and some of the teachers set out to mark the path with glow sticks. i had 6th graders that week and i really wanted to challenge them, so i had planned to make my solo walk a bit longer than usual. about half way through we ran into a GIANT puddle the entire width of the trail, about 6 inches deep. i had to end my solo walk there because i knew the kids would've had to swim through it and then they would complain and well...i've learned how to pick my battles in this job. they all made it back safely, mostly just complaining the solo walk was too short. at this point it was starting to rain harder and harder and i made the executive group decision to start heading back to camp to finish up my last bit of teaching in a dry room. and before i knew it, night hike was over. i went back to the office to drop off my radio and saw the faces of my fellow staff. some were actually crying. some looked so mad i knew they just didn't even wanna talk about it. it had been one of those nights where we have to just walk home and go to sleep immediately and hope the next day is better. i went to my room and started looking for my phone, only to find it at the bottom of my backpack completely soaked. it was broken. i put it in a bowl of dry rice to dry it out like everyone always says to do, but i knew it was probably a goner. the next day i went to the verizon store and got a new phone. but not just a regular new phone, oh no. i got this little gem of joy:



and now my life will never be the same. i mean...the things we can do with phones nowadays blows my mind. and i have a love/hate relationship with the fact that i can be on facebook in one second wherever i am. but the night from hell, night hike in the rain, resulted in some good. and that was the only night hike experience those kids have ever had. so thank you, God for the rain on wednesday night. it will make me grateful every wednesday night hike we don't have rain...and God thank you, thank you, thank you...for the Blackberry Curve.