Day 5: We Hope It Matters

"There are years that ask questions and years that answer." — Zora Neale Hurston

I always have a hard time writing Day 5. Maybe it is because I am tired and my heart is full, or maybe it is because there are some things you cannot really wrap up with a pretty bow and a group photo. The last day always makes me think a little more deeply about why we do this and what we hope happens after everyone packs their bags and heads home.

Before every STEAM in the PARK, we plan. Oh, do we plan. We build schedules, move activities around, talk to rangers, order supplies, pack pelicans, unpack pelicans, and change the schedule more times than I would ever admit. We watch the weather like we have some kind of personal relationship with the radar. We think about meals and shuttles and water bottles and name tags and who needs what and whether we remembered the colored pencils. There are so many details that go into five days together, but underneath all of that planning is something much bigger. Hope.

We hope what we planned meets the needs of the campers who actually show up. Not the campers we imagined when we built the schedule, but the real people who walk through the door carrying backpacks and stories and excitement and sometimes a whole lot of tired. We know that every group is different, and what worked beautifully at one park may not be what another group needs at all. We watch, we listen, we adjust, and we hope we get it right.

We pray for the right combination of ambassadors at each park. We do not choose them because they are all the same. Goodness, no. We need the calm ones and the silly ones. We need the ones who notice when someone is standing alone and the ones who can make thirty people laugh when the schedule completely falls apart. We need people who know when to step forward and lead and people who understand the importance of quietly sitting beside someone. Every park needs something different and every group needs something different, so year after year, we pray that the right people find their way to the right place.

We hope the schedules work and the weather holds. We hope the shuttle arrives, the supplies are where we thought we packed them, and the activity that sounded amazing in my head actually works when thirty educators are standing in the middle of a national park waiting for directions. There is always a moment during camp when Steve looks at me and I look at Steve and we both know the plan has changed. Again. Somehow, those moments often become some of the best parts of the week.

We pray for safety. This week, maybe more than most, I have been reminded how quickly life can change. One phone call, one accident, one moment you never saw coming can shift everything. We pray over the roads we travel and the trails we walk. We pray over the people we love who are here with us and the people we love waiting for us at home. I think about those people more than our campers probably realize.

We pray for great learning to happen, but not just the kind that fits neatly into a standard or can be written into a lesson plan. We hope someone looks through a solar scope and realizes they have been teaching about the sun for twenty years without ever really looking at it. We hope someone walks into the Bryce Amphitheater even though heights scare them. We hope someone sniffs a ponderosa pine and laughs or watches a shadow move across a page and begins asking a new question. We hope someone studies a hoodoo, listens to a ranger, looks up at the Milky Way, or becomes a prairie dog for an afternoon and remembers that learning can still surprise them.

We pray for relationships, both the ones that begin here and the ones waiting at home. We watch friendships form around tables, on shuttles, and while everyone is waiting for that one person who cannot find their water bottle. We see relationships grow over shared meals, hard hikes, inside jokes, and conversations that happen when people finally have time to sit together. We hope those relationships continue through text messages, classroom ideas, and hard school years long after camp is over.

We also think about the people at home who make these weeks possible. Those who hold things together while their person comes to camp. The children who share their moms and dads with us for a week and the grandchildren who wait for Mimi to come home. There are families all over the country who understand that sometimes the people they love need to stand beneath a dark sky in Utah and remember who they are. We never forget that they are part of this story, too.

More than anything, we hope what happens here travels home with our campers. We hope someone goes back to a classroom and moves a desk outside. We hope a child gets to touch a rock, study a leaf, or ask a question their teacher does not immediately answer. We hope a teacher remembers that curiosity is not something we have to manufacture. Sometimes we simply have to give it room. We hope a park feels a little closer, a classroom feels a little bigger, and someone feels braver, seen, or reminded that they can still do hard things.

If I am completely truthful, there are days when I wonder if any of it makes a difference. I think about the miles, the planning, the schedules, and the long nights writing blogs when I should absolutely be asleep. I wonder if we are doing enough and whether the things we pour so much of ourselves into will matter when everyone returns to real life.

Then Day 5 comes. The hugs last a little longer and people linger when they should probably be packing. Someone tells us they needed this week, and someone else admits they did not realize how much they needed it until they were here. I look around at people who were strangers five days ago and realize they are not strangers anymore. Maybe that is part of the answer.

We may never know every lesson that grows from this week. We will not see every child who benefits from something a teacher learned at Bryce Canyon, and we will not hear every story that gets told or see every classroom that steps outside. Maybe we are not supposed to know all of it. Maybe our job is simply to prepare the soil, gather the people, open the door, and point toward the hoodoos, the sun, the shadows, the prairie dogs, and that impossibly dark sky and ask people to look a little closer.

Today, as another STEAM in the PARK comes to an end, that is my prayer. I pray that we chose well, loved well, taught well, and listened well. I pray that somewhere, in some classroom we may never visit, something from this week takes root. We hope what we are doing makes a difference, and maybe hope is where all the best things begin.