As a program, Acclimatization (ACC) began in the northwoods of Wisconsin in the early sixties. I arrived on the scene at a private boys' camp there after my sophomore year in college, and the magic of those lakes and forests under a summer sun captivated me immediately. Although it was not my first counseling job, there was something about the land and life at Towering Pines that spoke to my deepest feelings and set the stage for events that would have totally unexpected results.

Among other tasks that summer, the owners asked me to take on setting up a new nature program. When I asked what they had been doing with nature study in the past, they hesitated a bit and finally said they really hadn't done much of anything for the last couple of years. "We use to do some things -- the counselors took the kids out and identified things, collected things, dissected things, experimented with things -- but to be honest, the kids just didn't seem to care very much about all that." (At this point, perhaps I should digress to explain that the camp was made up of over a hundred boys ranging in age from about seven to seventeen, and they were there for about seven weeks.) So I said I would see what I could do, and thus set out that summer to lead a small group of kids in some outside experiences.

Since one tends to do what one has seen done, you can probably imagine what I did with the kids in the beginning. I took them out and identified things, collected things, dissected things, experimented with things, and guess what, the owners were right, the kids really didn't care about all that stuff. Oh, you could get three or four to show up -- five or six on the days you cut something up -- but for the most part, the kids weren't much interested. They were more attracted to sailing and tennis and riding and water skiing, and so forth.

Finally, somewhat out of desperation perhaps, I sat down in a corner one day and asked myself a simple question, what are we building to? What do we want these kids to take home with them at the end of the summer? You see, I had a pretty good idea by then about what I was building on, but what was I really building to? As it turned out, my answer changed everything we would ever do. I decided that what I really wanted to do was just to turn the kids on to the natural world. I wanted to convey my love of the earth and its life, not for its labels and fables and fears, but because of my rich firsthand experiences with it. I wanted to convey a feeling of at-homeness with the earth, a feeling similar to what you have in your own house. You know what I mean, you feel good there; you understand its moods, its smells, its nooks and crannies. You return each evening, open the door, and say, "Hey, home." I wanted the kids to have that same feeling of security and comfortability that they have in their own homes, but with the planet itself -- our preeminent home -- the earth and its communities of life.

In fact, that's where I got the term Acclimatization. I decided to call the program by that name because at the camp we were trying to acclimate the kids to the earth and its natural systems. To acclimatize means to become accustomed to a new setting or surrounding, and that's what we were doing. For many of our urban-suburban youngsters the natural world was a new place, a place they had never really experienced very deeply....

Continue... Breaking "Follow-Me, Gather-Round"

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