Along a trail not far from Lake Michigan, Johanna Wielfaert led a group of five students through a wooded area in search of Eastern PeeWees and other birds. Peering through binoculars and studying field manuals, the students eagerly discussed the calls and markings on birds flitting about from tree to tree.

It was only 7:30 a.m. on a Sunday morning and already the students were fully engaged in an effort to find and identify as many species of birds as possible in the Nordhouse Dunes Wilderness Area, southwest of Manistee, Mich. They had crawled out of their tents at the crack of dawn to learn from each other as much as they could about the avian species that inhabited the wooded area.

Johanna and her colleagues were part of an unusual one-credit course, called “Wilderness Experience and Environmental Writing,” first offered at Michigan State University during fall 2004. It combined camping, nature study, journal writing and personal reflections about wilderness.

The course was an effort to get students out of the classroom and into the wilderness. The goal was to reconnect them with nature and inspire them by providing a learning opportunity in a relaxed setting far away from the pressures of jobs and classrooms.
I co-taught the course with Laurie Thorp, director of the Residential Initiative for the Study of the Environment (RISE) program at Michigan State University. It was truly an experimental course. We really didn’t know what to expect.

Before the class began, we surveyed the 25 students who enrolled to see how much camping experience they had and whether they had the necessary camping gear. Most had camped before and a few had extensive outdoor experience. But some — such as Guo Kai from Guangzhou, China — had never slept outside before.

How would Guo Kai and the other novices do? Would the sounds of wildlife at night frighten them? Would they and the more experienced students work well together? And how would the students adapt to a weekend far from the MSU campus — without cell phones, computers, television and stereos?

We met early on Friday, Sept. 10 and drove in a convoy of vans to P.J. Hoffmaster State Park where we learned about the ecology of sand dunes at the Gillette Nature Center. The students ran down to the beach and frolicked in the sand. It was a taste of what the rest of the weekend would offer.

We then drove north to the Nordhouse Dunes, the only federally designated wilderness area in Michigan’s lower peninsula. We found a group camping area about one-quarter mile from Lake Michigan and pitched our tents in a wooded area filled with jack pine, hemlock and juniper trees.

On both Friday and Saturday nights we enjoyed a feast of foods cooked over fires in Dutch ovens: Guadeloupe chili, lasagna, salads, blueberry cobbler and other foods made from Boy Scout recipes.

On Saturday the students were on their own. Laurie and I brought an assortment of field guides of birds, mammals, wildflowers and other wildlife for students to use. We encouraged them to explore at their own pace the flora and fauna at Nordhouse Dunes and record their observations and reflections in a nature journal and in nature essays. We urged them to sketch, paint, take photos, write poetry and use whatever medium they wanted to record what they saw, heard, felt and experienced. Our only real commands were to slow down their pace, help one another and be creative.

The students ventured off into very different directions. Kevin Lawracy peered at a rotting stump for hours and sketched some beautiful images of brightly colored mushrooms. Ross Wildman sea kayaked for three hours and came away impressed with the power of Lake Michigan’s winds and waves. Ted Roumell hiked to Nordhouse Lake and observed a plethora of tiny frogs. Guo Kai wrote Chinese characters in the sand and sang a beautiful Tibetan song around the campfire Saturday night.

Both Laurie and I were impressed with the ways the students worked together to learn as much as they could. The students gazed at the spectacular expanse of stars in the night sky and shared the names of the constellations. They laughed and relaxed and immensely enjoyed each other’s company. They bonded together in a way that far surpassed expectations.

Let me quote from some of the students’ personal observations about the weekend:

“This trip was an inspiration. Even though I had no required lecture to attend, no pages to read in a text, no fear of the next exam, I learned more in one weekend than is possible in a full semester in a classroom. I was reminded of how good it feels to laugh and meet new people, as to how beautiful dew-covered trees are in the morning, and most importantly I remembered why I am so passionate about caring for the environment,” wrote Kristen Brown.

Johanna Wiefaert put it this way, “Upon arriving at Nordhouse Dunes I didn’t know what to expect…The breeze off the lake revitalized my spirits and reminded me of my childhood. I skipped rocks, ran along the shore, played in the sand, swam and lazed about. I had the chance to listen to things I had never heard before, notice detail that seemed unnoticeable before and felt an awareness I hadn’t felt in a long time.”

And Carol Maniaci described the experience in this manner: “In the journalism program at State you are given the chance to sink or swim… I sometimes feel that it has drained the creativity out of me. I wrote the entire weekend at the lake and enjoyed it in a way that re-inspired me as a journalist…When I came home I approached school in a different way. I was high from nature and refused to let that go. The experience helped me regain a sense of what is truly important in the world. I met people who are passionate about taking care of this planet and that made me want to work harder at everything I do.”

Laurie Thorp and I were so impressed with the students’ work and success of the weekend, that we have decided to work together to find more ways to get students out of the classroom and into the panoramas of nature. We will offer the course again in fall 2005 and seek new ways to reconnect with nature. For many of us, it is the love of the outdoors and the wilderness that got us interested in writing about environmental issues in the first place.