Reflecting on Traditions

The Latin word traditio means to transmit, to hand over, to give for safekeeping. We owe it to ourselves, our species, and the earth itself, to hand over these skills for safekeeping. Do it out of love, not obligation, and it will enrich your life as well as the lives of those around you.

The little olive-green Duluth Pack No. 2 was stuffed with a puffy jacket, hat, mittens, and Scholastic paperback books. My then four-year-old daughter, Whitney, was responsible for her own pack. The wife Stephanie my wife was pregnant with our son, Ian, so in a sense it was the first Boundary Waters trip for both my kids. Whitney wore the homemade fleece jacket Stephanie sewed for her and a kid-sized Tilley hat when it was sunny or rainy. Before the trip, we picked out items for her mess kit: silverware, a bowl, a cup. She wrote “Whitney,” or “WB,” on everything we bought.

Naturally, she had duties. One was to keep an eye out for wildlife – loons, bears, moose, jays, red squirrels, and, of course, ground squirrels. To keep things interesting, she was paid and had to keep track. A quarter for a loon, a dollar for a bear or moose, and a dime for squirrels. The entire trip cost me under $5.00, and it kept her on the lookout. After a while, she watched without the financial incentive. Frankly, it was more just a way to keep score.

We made a swing out of our bear rope. We encouraged reading and helping in the makeshift “kitchen.” Mostly, Whitney just wandered, snooping around for treasures – pine cones, mushrooms, ghost pipes, rocks, stones, and feathers.

Whitney was destined to be a paddler. (My occupation as manager and later owner of Rutabaga Paddlesports didn’t hurt her odds.) She admits she realized only later in childhood that this wasn’t normal. None of her friends had a solo canoe that was just her size, which seemed to be lost on her. She didn’t learn to ride a bike until she was 10, but she could do a cross-bow draw.

Thirty-three years later, Whitney and her mother organized a trip in the BWCA, taking a route that encompassed part of the same trip she took a third of a century ago. Whitney leads trips, often all-women trips. She’s a natural leader and a mentor. A third of a century of camping gave her excellent skills in packing, cooking, setting up tarps, hanging food barrels – and, of course, paddling.

Ian likewise was destined to be a paddler; he received his first paddle before he could sit up. Canoeing legend Patrick Moore had a fondness for both my children, and he carved Ian a small oak paddle perfectly scaled for a baby.

I have a small solo/tandem canoe, a Curtis Companion, that worked wonderfully for paddling with young kids. If I turned it around and put a child in the rear seat facing the stern, while I turned around in the front seat, it trimmed perfectly. At two, Ian tried to help; at three, he added power. By six, he could do steering strokes from the bow. By 10, he ended up in a solo canoe on one trip.

Now, Ian’s paddles are the same length as or longer than mine, as he’s well over 4” taller than I am. Ian went to the Boundary Waters on his honeymoon. He could light a campfire in a monsoon.

If you know how to sharpen a knife, drive a nail, change a flat tire, cook an omelet, or rebuild an internal combustion engine, it’s because someone taught you or you just figured it out, making lots of mistakes along the way. Most of us experience both.

Outdoor skills can be learned alone, but the chances of success (i.e., a comfortable, enjoyable experience) can diminish quickly. Learning where and how to pitch a tent, set up a tarp for living in the rain, and cook over a one-burner stove is better done before you find yourself camped on a low spot, sitting miserably in the rain, or burning dinner. None of those things is ideal if you want your friends to keep up their outdoor adventures.

Teaching how to handle problems is also about attitude. Everyone gets wet sometimes when a seam on their rainwear fails, and everyone has burned the oatmeal. So, you dry off as best you can, scrape the good oatmeal off the top, laugh, and move on.

Society, as a whole, is set up to separate us from knowledge. Since 2008, most Mercedes-Benz automobiles have had no user-accessible dipstick. Rather, a sensor lights up a dashboard warning to inform you to see your technician. For the entire history of automobiles, we trusted drivers to pull a little stick out of a hole and see that the oil was at the proper level. Convenient for the owner who knows nothing about engines, but really?

Whitney Bush, third from left, took her first canoe trip when she was four years old. Whitney and her mother, Stephanie, second from right, now lead canoe trips into the BWCA.

PHOTO CREDIT DARREN BUSH

That kind of society won’t pass knowledge to future generations. That is up to us.

Maybe you set up a tent in your front yard and let the curious kids see it and crawl inside, perhaps for the first time. I dunno, whatever works for you. If you’re paddling on a local lake and see kids on the dock watching you paddle, talk to them. Let them hold your paddle. Pull the boat out, put it on the grass, and let them sit in it. I carry a child’s PFD in my truck, and if a kid is enthusiastic, they can get a ride (with a parent’s permission, of course). A three-minute loop is enough to give them a chance to feel what it’s like on the water. The less they talk, the more they’re soaking it up.

Without us as a collective, the transmission of knowledge ceases. When people care more about virtual recreation, whether it be gaming, social media, or just excessive screen time, they care less about the outdoors. That which we don’t value, we don’t protect.

The Latin word traditio means to transmit, to hand over, to give for safekeeping. We owe it to ourselves, our species, and the earth itself, to hand over these skills for safekeeping. Do it out of love, not obligation, and it will enrich your life as well as the lives of those around you.