Get Your Kids Outside Now!

I grew up at a time when stickball, tag, riding your bike, and fishing still had the upper hand on video games. This was when Pong and Atari were popular, but not popular enough to keep kids inside during daylight hours. If the sun was out, so were my friends and I. I can only remember one or two times when I reluctantly went to bed before the sun went down, missing the final inning of a championship wiffleball game and holding a grudge with my Mom for days. I guess I was lucky to grow up in a neighborhood where there was a lot of other kids to play with, trees to climb, and creeks to fish in.

Imagine my surprise when the following email was forwarded to me from Aaron Storms:

“The Boulder Trout Unlimited folks will sponsor [pay for] one kid to go participate in this week-long camp [the 2008 Colorado Trout Unlimited Youth Conservation & Flyfishing Camp], and they've had problems finding ONE kid to do it! So, I'm sending these details along to all of you, in hopes that between us we could come up with a few possible candidates. To submit candidate(s) for sponsorship by Boulder Flycasters, contact Paul Prentiss [at] peprentiss@earthlink.net [or by] phone (303.444.0270). Deadline for application is March 30.”

I found more information about the camp in the original Colorado Trout Unlimited (CTU) press release:

“Camp classes will include: principles of ecology, hydrogeology, aquatic vertebrate and invertebrate sampling, hydrology, trout behavior, trout stream entomology, the biology of pollution, acid deposition, and politics of conservation and human effects on the Rocky Mountains. In addition, the camp will include hands-on classes such as fly tying, fly casting, streamside ethics, angling literature, streamside botany, wader safety and survival, and the evolution of an angler. Students will also participate in a watershed project to repair habitat in a nearby stream. The River Conservation and Fly Fishing Youth Camp includes faculty from various environmental fields and state agencies such as the Colorado Division of Wildlife, Department of Environmental Protection and National Forest Service.”

Sign me up! If only I were 14 again, I’d be hand delivering the application essay to the President of CTU and sitting on his doorstep until I knew I’d been accepted. I’m having a hard time believing that not one kid has shown any interest in this amazing opportunity to learn about aquatic biology, environmental conservation, and fly fishing! What the heck is going on!! Something is wrong here. Is it television? Video games? The internet? What has changed so much in just a couple of generations that kids are more inclined to spend their time inside instead of outside? I know that I can’t just blame the kids – they follow their parents. Their Fathers and Mothers are their role models. If we ride the couch too much, guess what, they’re more than happy to sit right beside us munching on the popcorn and pretzels too. That has got to change.

I’m now convinced, more than ever, that I’ve got to limit my time in front of the television and spend more time outside with the kids. If they, and their friends, don’t develop an appreciation for the natural world, I worry that the next generation of conservationists and sportsmen will be even more limited than the last. (By the way, I feel that there is a strong connection between fisherman/hunters and conservationism; maybe more so than the connection between so called “tree huggers” and conservationism. More about debate that in a future article, I promise.)

If you have a teenager (14-18) that has even the slightest interest in aquatic biology, environmental conservation, and flyfishing, please consider applying for this sponsorship. Even if they don’t know what flyfishing is, please consider applying – they’ll learn how to flyfish as part of the program. After talking to David Nickum, the Executive Director of CTU, I can can tell you it is an experience that will be remembered for a lifetime.

More information about the Colorado Trout Unlimited Youth Conservation & Flyfishing Camp is available at http://www.boulderflycasters.org/ (click Youth Education on the right-hand side). Links to the Boulder Flycasters, Colorado Trout Unlimited, Trout Unlimited, and more of my barely edible writing can be found at rookieelkhunter.blogspot.com.