CONNECTING CHILDREN
TO THE EARTH

Times of the Islands - Spring 2000 Issue
 

strong wings uses the environment to teach nantucket youth

People should live in a state of being, rather than spending their lives stuck in a state of trying to become. That's what John Simms, executive director and founder of Strong Wings, believes. "When you allow yourself to just be and live in the moment, the mind stays focused on what is real and happening just then," Simms says. "The alternative is allowing the mind to wander into worries, fears, and self-doubt."

In essence, Strong Wings is Nantucket's answer to programs such as Outward Bound and the National Outdoor Leadership School. It encourages students to "use the environment to regain a sense of self," says Simms. According to the mission statement, "The Strong Wings quest is to provide the opportunity for Nantucket's youth to experience nature and better understand their vital connection with it." Simms designed Strong Wings to increase self-esteem, promote strengths, help in the development of responsibility for actions, and encourage students to gain respect for the environment through outdoor adventure education courses.

Simms began his work with Nantucket's Youth-at-Risk program at the Nantucket Counseling Service in 1986. It didn't take him long to realize that "we needed to start working with these kids before they had trouble."

Because his mission was different from the Nantucket Counseling Service's ideals, in 1991 Simms went off on his own and formed Strong Wings Inc., a nonprofit organization. "Kids get pigeonholed," says Simms. Parents, friends, teachers, and others in the community expect a person to behave and perform a certain way, be it bad, good, or indifferent, he explains. Strong Wings tries to provide experiences where people can begin to peel away the mask that others have painted. In Strong Wings, kids are neither good nor bad. "They are all the same, but different. If you have 100 kids, you have 100 categories," says Simms.

For Nantucket parents, Strong Wings provides a place where their children can mature outside of their homes and classrooms in concert with the island's natural world. Parents can be somewhat naive, says Simms. "Parents will say, 'You don't have to worry about Jimmy, he can take care of himself.' And the older the kids get, the more their parents think they can take care of themselves. Whether they are 18 or 4, they still need someone to take care of them. When a kid does a horrible thing, friends, neighbors, even family members often say 'I never expected it; he/she was such a good kid.'" However, says Simms, "we all have problems."

To prevent island kids from walking down the wrong path in their lives, Strong Wings teaches its charges to work through their problems in healthy ways, through exercise, meditation, and camaraderie.

The Vision

Simm's belief in Strong Wings is so intense that you can almost see the Nantucket outdoor school's soon-to-be-built headquarters poking through the pines on Strong Wings' two-acre lot when he talks about it. Strong Wings purchased the land in 1997 from the Nantucket Land Bank, which uses a 2-percent property transfer tax to buy land for conservation and recreation.

Standing at the building site off Nobadeer Farm Road, Simms brings to life his vision of the Strong Wings Adventure School that this fall will sprout into reality. The school's main building, a post-and-beam barn, will encompass a large meeting room, library, nature room, kitchen, and offices. Tucked into the woods nearby will be a 25-foot climbing wall, nature and adventure trails, and a state-of-the-art ropes course. Another two-acre tract between the Strong Wings land and Nobadeer Farm Road is owned by the Blue Dot Foundation, another conservation organization that buys up smaller pockets of land for recreation or conservation. If it becomes financially feasible, Strong Wings may opt to purchase the additional two acres from Blue Dot.

expanding minds and horizons

While there are many true believers out there, Strong Wings remains a difficult program to describe. Everyone agrees that you have to experience Strong Wings to understand it. "It has taken me years to understand the goal of the program," says 23-year-old island native Megan Soverino who has worked with Strong Wings for the past seven years and participated in programs prior to that while in school on Nantucket. "Strong Wings has expanded my mind and my horizons," Soverino says. "It brings an awareness of the environment we live in."

Soverino has just returned from an ice-climbing expedition with Nantucket High School students in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. "It was definitely a personal challenge, both physically and mentally," she says. Soverino led the young ice climbers up a 50- to 60-foot vertical mountain face with snow falling at an inch an hour during a winter cold snap. Halfway up an ice wall, she says she was ready to give up. Then came "verbal support [from the high school students she was leading] and as soon as you could see the top, it gave you the energy to reach the top."

Too young to strap on crampons and swing an ice ax, 7-year-old Nicholas Lombardi learned to honor and respect the environment in Strong Wings' after-school program, says his mother, Maureen Lombardi. "It has been wonderful for my son to get in tune with nature," says Lombardi, whose son participated in Strong Wings' fort-building program that takes place every Tuesday afternoon in Nantucket's state forest. The group first built a model and then eventually completed a weather-resistant fort, says Lombardi, who spent an afternoon inside the fort with friends and family.

Each year, third-grade classes at Nantucket Elementary School go into the state forest to build forts out of tree limbs, branches, and boughs. Simms discourages parents from accompanying their children to the forest and recommends that teachers just sit back and watch the kids in their natural environment. "You can find out so much about a child just watching them build a fort for two hours," says Simms.

Students who are struggling in school often excel at Strong Wings, says Simms. "It keeps kids out of trouble," says 16-year-old Jules Embry-Pelrine. "It teaches [kids] to work together with other kids toward a common goal."

Embry-Pelrine is a counselor-in-training at Strong Wings. "Working with kids tries your patience," he admits. "After I got into it, I realized how important it is not to let my temper get the best of me." Now Embry-Pelrine says he is trying harder than ever. When he started with Strong Wings, he says he wasn't interested in biking, but then began bike racing, which pushed him to be fit. "Anyone can do it as long as you like being outside. Even on bad [weather] days, it's not that bad; in fact, it's kind of fun."

bird-watching 101

During its nine years of operation, Strong Wings has developed a relationship with Nantucket's private school, the Nantucket New School, to provide an environmental and exercise class for that alternative island school. Eventually, the Nantucket New School will be Strong Wings' next-door neighbor out on Nobadeer Farm Road, once the new headquarters building is completed.

An outdoor leadership skills in-school course for all island middle and high school students is designed to "re-energize and redirect students toward a more positive school experience, while promoting self-esteem." "It's hands-on learning outside the classroom," says counselor Shelly Bougor, "so they can go back to school and be productive. We teach individual development, team building, and the importance of working together to attain a goal." Using a map and compass, students have to find their way out of an island forest, build a ropes course, and then figure out how they and their fellow students will traverse it.

Each summer, Strong Wings conducts fairly intense, hands-on summer camps for children in four age groups from 5 to 15. They challenge children to push their limits and to do things they haven't done before.

After years of working with children, Simms recently began offering Adult High Adventures. He describes these three- to five-day excursions as affordable eco-adventure trips "with a group of community members that share similar physical and spiritual traits." The trips have included a physically demanding ice-climbing trip, camping and biking trips, and whitewater rafting and kayaking trips.

"I believe, in general, adults are more difficult to work with than kids because they are more stuck in their ways and have expectations," says Simms. Adults often come to Strong Wings' programs with a list of things they hope to accomplish listed one through ten, but on arrival Simms asks them to throw their lists away. "Our mission today is to have a good, safe, fun time, and everything else is just gravy." Simms asks that everyone enter his programs with no expectations "so they won't be disappointed," he says. "And that ties into the whole losing of the mind and living in the moment."

Another new Strong Wings program, Professional Adventure Workshops, or PAW, is designed to help businesses develop a greater sense of teamwork and problem-solving skills through adventure projects. These trips are individually customized and draw - as with all Strong Wings programs - from Simms's Outward Bound instructor training, as well as from his master's degree in environmental education, which he earned from Antioch University in Keene, New Hampshire.

Two annual events - the Treasure Hunt and the New Year's Eve Mountain Bike Race - provide scholarship funds for Strong Wings programs. The Treasure Hunt is hosted on the last Sunday in April. Treasure hunters buy their maps, designed by Simms, at the Hub on Main Street in town, and then scatter to uncover clues, which lead to authentic pirate treasure provided by island banks and businesses.

On New Year's Eve, mountain bike racers pedal over hill and dale for a prize at the end of a 3.8-mile course through dirt and sand trails near Cisco Beach. One of those racers, pedaling his way to the end of the millennium was 12-year-old Gregory MacKay, who says he dreams of becoming a Strong Wings counselor. "I wouldn't let the kids push me around, I would always have a plan. I would listen to the kids. It's important to listen to the kids, and I would try and make everybody happy." Every Friday afternoon, no matter what the weather, MacKay and a gang of hard-core mountain bikers hit the moors between Milestone and Polpis roads for some "adrenaline-rushing" rides. "It's really fun. The whole thing is just great. It's like freedom, almost." MacKay says he wishes school gym classes were more like Strong Wings.

connecting to the earth

"Society has changed," reflects Simms. "It used to be about learning how just to be and survive. Now everything is provided for you. Man now feels outside and separate of the earth. Man no longer feels as though he is a part of, or equal to, every part of the earth." Simms and his program leaders stress the importance of finding that connection to the earth.

Despite environmentalists who discourage people from leaving the trail, Soverino says it's important to leave the beaten path once in a while to experience nature in its untouched raw form. Because of her sense of adventure and discovery, Soverino says, "even in the summer when there's 50,000 [summer island visitors], I can almost be assured of not running into another soul" in secret places she has discovered.

Strong Wings allows people to "connect to the earth and, in a smaller sense, Nantucket," says Soverino. Nantucket's unhealthy rate of growth and development could be curbed if only people had connections or attachments to Nantucket, which are gained, she says, through hours of isolation in remote areas. "Our happiest moments are when we are freed from our minds and can just be," says Simms.

Susan Beaumont is a freelance writer living on Nantucket.

© Strong Wings 2000-2008