This past Wednesday I got to work with kids for the first time in seven months.

It was one of the first days that it really looked like autumn. Down in the sugarbush, we were surrounded by trees of all different colors and even in the rain, it was beautiful. When the kids started to arrive it was wet out, but a light drizzle at most. It was perfect weather for them to immediately start digging into the dirt to find worms, newts, salamanders, and all sorts of creepy crawlers.

By the time we got to fort building it had started to rain more, but that didn’t lessen the kids’ enthusiasm for being outside. They worked quickly, foraging for sticks that were twice their height and gathering leaf litter to use as insulation. The older kids in the group were at the forefront of the operations—they scoped out the best trees to build their forts around and delegated tasks to their younger peers.

When I had last been around kids in February we were building forts too. But those forts were against a different Vermont landscape, one that required snow pants instead of rain pants and shovels instead of sticks. While the kids in February had faces covered by scarves and buffs they were now replaced with face masks—ones with monster teeth or floral prints.

To state the obvious and reiterate what we now seem to hear in every piece of media we consume, the world has changed more than we ever could have imagined in these past seven or eight months. There are so many obvious changes that started back in March, between seeing people less and transitioning to a world primarily online and plagued by paranoia and uncertainty. One thing I hadn’t realized until just last week was that such a large part of my life to change was not working with kids.

I don’t think I had gone as long without spending time around children as I just did probably ever in my life. I grew up surrounded by younger siblings and cousins and as soon as they were growing up I was babysitting the children of other families and working at daycares. A combination of a love for the outdoors and a love for working with children is what got me to start working in environmental education and apply for this internship with Audubon.

As I’ve worked with Audubon throughout easily the weirdest year of my life I’ve learned so much more about what it means to work in environmental education. This semester I have started to do research on nature-based mindfulness as a healing aid in the addiction recovery process and I am constantly expanding my definition of what environmental education means to me and where I can find meaning in this work moving forward in my life. I am excited to move forward with Audubon this semester with a myriad of projects, largely looking at accessibility issues and community connection. In a world where I so often feel that I am “not doing enough” I am reminded of the intersectionality within the career path I feared I pigeon-holed myself into too young. I am grateful to spend time continually expanding and building on what it means to be an educator.

And then there are days like Wednesday, that brings me back to the root of why I started any of this work in the first place. There’s something so special about getting to co-teach programs with Audubon—I get to play. The reasons that accessibility matter and that nature provides a healing resource and a starting point for community growth, lie in what nature means to people. Being outside is calming, grounding, exciting, thought-provoking, and really, really, fun.

I’ve always loved playing in the rain and growing up with three brothers we found every opportunity to build forts that we could get. This last day that I got to teach two young kids dragged a thick fallen branch over to me that collectively could have been longer than the three of us stacked atop one another. “We need to break this”. After strategizing and assessing our stick-breaking options we decidedly had six or seven kids holding up one side while I jumped down on the other. The satisfying snap of the branch and booming cheer of the children was the most joy I’d seen and been a part of in the past seven months. I am so thankful to play outside in the rain with these kids.