<p>Jon Rombach</p>

I got to help out recently with the Wallowa Resources WREN program (Wallowa Resources Exploration of Nature), where the outdoors is the classroom and Mother Nature is part of the teaching staff. I filled in for Brent Wydrinski, Wallowa County fella who is currently down in Antarctica refueling planes at the McMurdo Station research facility.

I was supposed to be a teaching assistant for WREN, but couldnt help learning a few things myself. One valuable lesson I will not soon forget is that an old guy like me should really try to stretch out before sprinting around to play Capture The Flag with a spry bunch of youngsters. Theyre like gazelles, these children. I had trouble moving my legs at all for two full days afterward.

Probably my favorite moment during my WREN experience was seeing an impressive smoke plume rising in the distance where kids had been sent to light a fire. All safety factors were covered. The ground was soaked by recent rains and landowner Dave Duncan wasnt just allowing the WREN students to build shelters and start fires, he was there as an instructor to encourage and guide the kids along.

Still, this was an eyebrow-raising column of smoke. The adults went to investigate. Education coordinator Amy Busch, myself, Dave and his sister-in-law Tamarah Duncan. We were all impressed, and for good reason. This was a bonafide bonfire. The kids had been allowed three strike-anywhere matches to get a blaze going. Easier said than done when everythings been soaked recently, including the rocks you would use to spark your matches.

Aside from the practicality of knowing how to responsibly create fire, or the red flower, as it was known in the jungle where I grew up, I just like the fact that kids got to do an activity like this. I know a fair number of adults, myself included, who would get excited about going off to start a fire in front of a shelter they just built. Taken to the extreme youve got Wallowa County resident Jordan Manley, who looks somewhat like a wild creature just in general and has been going out on a regular basis to live off the land for long stretches.

I just dont think theres all that many places where this kind of thing can happen so easily. These kids got in a van for a short ride out to Leap Country. Before long theyd done some team building, IDed some plants, practiced some bushcraft, chopped some things down and set them back up in the form of a place they could spend the night if they had to. And then that glorious column of smoke. I was downright proud of those kids. Ive seen grown men struggle more with making a fire in similar conditions, and the adults had diesel-gas mix at their disposal.

It was one of those moments where you look up from something good going on and take a minute to look around at where youre at. So thats what popped in my head this year around the Thanksgiving table, as my family and I were trying to condense what were thankful for into bite-sized nuggets. Helping out with WREN genuinely made me grateful for being outdoors in the Wallowas on a nice day. And seeing those kids out there learning and having fun at the same time added an extra boost. Im also thankful for strike-anywhere matches. But if I had to choose one thing Im most thankful for, Id say Im grateful that Im so slow. Those kids were able to tag me and send me off to jail for a much needed rest almost immediately during that game of Capture The Flag. If theyd let me run around for even just another minute or so, Im not sure I would have ever recovered.

Jon Rombach is a local columnist for the Chieftain.