Perspective – Mary Stringer

Sometimes you look at your life and wonder, “How did I get here?” Often times that question is posed when things are going every way other than how you envisioned. You ask yourself, “Where did I go wrong? What were those poor choices I made when I thought I wasn’t choosing anything at all?“

If we are lucky, however, we occasionally get the opportunity to look back in splendid wonder at how our lives have progressed. I feel like I’m in that rare and lucky time of my life when the crayon I color my perspective in reads Rose on the label.

If you had asked me five years ago, even three years ago, where I would be now I might have told you working outside, but I wanted it to be at a National Park. I might have said I saw myself as a teacher, but I envisioned “Dr.” in front of my last name. Things being as they are, it turns out I was only wrong about the easiest thing to get wrong: the details. Instead of in the well-known, over-crowded parking lot for RVs that many of our National Parks have been reduced to, I work among the East Texas pines that I have grown to know as my home. I am a teacher, but my students
can’t accumulate crippling amounts of debt for their desire to learn…yet.

I stumbled upon outdoor education just as I stumbled upon my ability to not only affectively teach fifth-graders but to also act as mother hen to anywhere from 8-12 ten- and eleven-year old girls. Like many of life’s greatest gifts, I had to trip over them in order to find them. I saw myself in a National Park because I wanted to leave Texas. I wanted to see something I had never seen before. I wanted to experience an adventure like I see through my students’ eyes each week. The wanderlust sparkles though as they see trees taller than they’ve ever seen or more stars in the sky than they ever imagined could exist. Just imagine how their peepers open when you say that’s not even the half of it.

It’s true some students are less effected because they have been to those National Parks I wanted to work at. They realize when they ride the school bus for two hours that they are no longer in Houston. The sparkle in their eyes is duller in comparison to those students who think they are still in the ever-sprawling metropolitan of Houston even after they have driven down the two-lane road that dead-ends at the Outdoor Education Center in Trinity, Texas, some 80 miles away. For some that is the farthest they have ever been. For some that is the farthest they will ever go.

I mentioned earlier how I wanted to leave Texas, and while I still long for adventure, I no longer feel like I have to live in some other place to achieve it. My desire to move out of state was based off my want to choose my circumstances.

I was never consulted on where I was to be born and raised. Like many youth, I felt getting away from everything I’d ever known was what I needed to grow. However, while living under these pines I have experienced what if feels like to stand strong with some roots under you. Changing my perspective of those roots unintentionally but gratefully changed my circumstances. Staying in East Texas after graduation from Sam Houston State University has allowed me to reap the benefits from an established root system, however juvenile.

Working at the OEC I have gained even more of an appreciation for my state of affiliation. I presume that knowledge of a place breeds respect. I’ve learned so much in just one school year at the OEC about nature, kids, people, life, responsibility, silliness, and the importance of a nap. Some of that acquired knowledge was more than likely recall from the depths of my grade school mind, while other bits of golden nuggets have opened my eyes to my role as a human on this planet. While I’m not asking my students or cabin chicklings to put on their water wings so they can stay afloat in the deep end with me while I ponder the meaning of life, I do strive to provide for them an experience that allows them to find themselves in one way or another. If one kid leaves with a broader perspective on life — the supposed impossibilities, the importance of their
individuality, or their ability to change their circumstances while in the same place — I feel I have done my job.

And to tell you the truth, I think I prefer Miss Mary over Dr. Stringer.

Mary Stringer