My summer full of adventure!

2 ‹‹‹ August 27, 2014 ‹‹‹ MOSCOWPULLMAN DAILY NEWS For Kids. By Kids. ‹‹‹ VOICE OF THE YOUTH

This new magazine is for you and we want it to be by you. Voice of the Youth will publish four times a year and we want it full of student-submitted content. So, if you write stories, draw,

paint or write poems we want to hear from you! Have a special take on an event in our community or suggestions on what kids can do for fun, volunteer opportunities or improvements to our

area? Let us have them. We are also working to form a youth advisory board to help us pick stories and art for the magazine. If you are interested in being on the committee or have

something you would like published in our next issue please email akay@dnews.com. We look forward to hearing from you. Have an awesome day!

Welcome to Voice of the Youth

by Megan Kay

I’m new to the Idaho/Washington area since my dad and step-mom just moved here from Wyoming in April. I went to work with my dad in Pullman so I could meet some people. I met everybody in the office, they were great. There she was, a cute small precious little girl, Ainslee. The most darling baby ever. She gets to come to work everyday with her mommy. I enjoyed playing with her and keeping her company while our parents worked.

It is beautiful here, the parks, rivers, mountains. We decided to go for a walk in the park for Father’s Day. When we got back from walking along the river and watching the boats and geese we had an amazing BBQ.

New friends. I had heard all about them, I just hadn’t met them, but that was about to change! They all came over for dinner and I finally got to meet my cousins. Luke and Noe are super fun to play with. My older cousin Jay even taught us how to swing dance in the front yard of great-grandma’s house.

A hike to remember. We decided to hike Palouse Falls. At first it wasn’t very fun because it was steep and slippery. It was absolutely beautiful once we got to the bottom. It was fun playing in the water and seeing the giant rock chucks. We hiked around

and felt the mist on our faces. The water fall was amazing and powerful. Taking pictures was a blast too. Cousin Jay got a great one of my dad pointing out the route we would take back. It was a great day full of adventure.

A missing piece. One morning when I woke up dad and my step-mom Angela said we were going to go get a car. It was like finding another piece to the puzzle of our new life. We drove two, a cute blue one and one silver. The silver one was the one for us. We took it home and named her Francesca.

The pond and a rodeo. It was the 4th of July, our Independence day! We drove the new car to a family pond in Potlach. I got to meet family I didn’t even know about! I made friends with Clancee quickly. Once we were used to the water we kept jumping off the diving board and swimming. We caught frogs and one jumped out of my cousins hand right into a tree. We called that one “tree frog”. The next day we went to the Winchester Rodeo to watch Clancee’s sister Callee barrel race. I got to stand right next to the bulls as they came through the chute. It was really exciting and Callee did an awesome job.

Another new friend. My great-grandma Holly introduced me to one of her friend’s granddaughters, Emily. We became fast friends

and spent time at movies, swimming and line dancing with our grandmas.

Silverwood. We woke up early and loaded all our stuff into the car. Kaitlann, Jay, and my parents were all going. Kaitlann is my 17 year old cousin from Clarkston. I always have fun with her and I was so happy she was coming along. We headed to Bolder Beach as soon as we got there. Kaitlann, Jay and I did the big waterslides first. On one it felt like we were going to go over the edge, but we didn’t. It was fun and scary. After a long time on the slides and in the lazy river we went over to the roller coasters. The first one I went on was Corkscrew. It was great! I officially had the roller coaster bug. I couldn’t get to the next one fast enough. We went on all of them! The scariest ride was Spin Cycle. I got home and went straight to bed, it was an exhausting and fun day.

Huckleberries and Pellet Guns! This was my first time Huckleberry picking. Great-grandma Holly and daddy taught me how to identify the berries and gave me tips on picking them. I never really got a lot in my bucket because I ate them as fast as I picked them. When Huckleberry picking got boring my Dad showed me how to shoot the pellet gun. Like dad always says, gun safety is important and he reviews it with me every time before I shoot. I always check if

the gun is loaded when somebody hands it to me, I never ever point it at anything I don’t intent to shoot and I never treat a gun like a toy. I had fun shooting a pop can with my step-mom while Dad and great-grandma kept picking. We got a lot of berries that day so that meant pies, muffins, jam and syrup were in our near future.

Camping with Grandpa and Bull Moose. Great-Grandma Holly and I made zucchini bread in preparation for camping. It would be great for breakfast in the mountains. We used the zucchini from our garden. Grandpa was waiting for us at our campsite at Georgetown Lake in Montana. It was wonderful to see him. The weekend was full of fishing, boating and even a surprise visit from three Bull Moose who spent the weekend grazing by our site and swimming in the lake. I caught two fish and got to go tubing with some new friends. I caught more frogs and danced on the pontoon boat with my Aunt Lynette and my step-mom. We even went for a swim in the lake when it got hot.

A visit from my Aunt Jenner. Yippee, finally Aunt Jenner was here! My step-mom’s best friend Jennifer came out to visit and see our new territory. We took her to lake Couer d’lane. It is so beautiful there. Lunch was super yummy and the shops were cute. I got to pick

out a bunch of candy in a little candy shop. The lake felt great when we took a late afternoon swim. Aunt Jenner even brought some luck with her. We finally found our perfect house while she was here. We made an offer and it was accepted! Soon we will be official residence of Colton, WA. It’s a long way from Wyoming but I know I’m really going to like it here.

Summer is drawing to a close soon and I will be headed back to school in Casper, Wyoming with my mom and step-dad. I love having four parents who love me very much and now I have two placed to have fun! I will be back at Christmas to explore some more and I bet we find a good spot to ski! I will always remember my first summer here and look forward to more.

Megan Kay is 12 years old and will starting 7th grade this week. If you have something fun to share with us, a story, picture, drawing or poem, we would love to see it. Please email your “Voice of the Youth” contribution to akay@dnews.com. Maybe you will be published next!

My summer full of adventure!

fun shooting a pop

and great-grandma

out a bunch of

Moscow-PullMan Daily news ››› August 27, 2014 ››› �Voice of the Youth ››› For Kids. By Kids.

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4 ‹‹‹ August 27, 2014 ‹‹‹ MOSCOWPULLMAN DAILY NEWS For Kids. By Kids. ‹‹‹ VOICE OF THE YOUTH

by Judy Sobeloff

“You know what’s good about this?” I said as we set off. “I really have no idea where we’re going. That makes it an adventure.”

We had been to the bike pump track at PCEI (Palouse Clearwater Environmental Institute) in Moscow for the first time the day before, and were now heading over to ride our bikes on the river trail in Pullman at the suggestion of Scott McBeath, who leads bike camps for kids and had

“made huge improvements” to the river trail with a group of 15 kids from one of his camps. “Every camp I have one kid fall in the river and get wet, but that’s part of it,” he said. “It’s super fun. You’re crossing the stream on these bridges that are just recycled lumber.”

Inspired by a deeply resonant article my friend Britt handed me about “adventure playgrounds,” places where kids run around and build things out of mattresses and old tires and boards out in the woods, with only a whiff of adult supervision (Hanna

Rosin, “Hey! Parents, Leave Those Kids Alone,” The Atlantic, April 2014). My question was: Can we do this here?

I was gung-ho for us to get something like that started here on the Palouse when Britt said, “It’s actually kind of sad, because they’re replacing what used to be the norm, the sandlot, where kids just went and did this, with an orchestrated experience.” I saw immediately, she was right.

Electronics are eating our

kids’ brains, and our brains! Kids’ creativity and ability to think for themselves is declining. Being out in nature is good for people. Developmentally, kids need to be able to take reasonable risks. At a certain age, they need to be able to do so away

from adults. Parents have been arrested this summer for sending their kids to the park on their own. Someone had to do something. I wanted this kind of park for our kids: here, now.

As Rosin’s article points out, due to past lawsuits involving playground accidents, most

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MOSCOWPULLMAN DAILY NEWS ››› August 27, 2014 ››› 5VOICE OF THE YOUTH ››› For Kids. By Kids.

playgrounds in the U.S. today are so bound by safety guidelines that they’re hardly engaging for kids over the age of six. But something different seems to be happening, with people realizing there are huge negative consequences to this. A cultural shift!

We’d been talking about all

this with a few other friends and lamenting the dearth of real wild spots here in Moscow for a good half an hour when my friend Duane suddenly remembered there was a place like that right behind his house. “There are big ravines from erosion and a bunch of

pallets out there that the kids use to build bridges,” he said. “If it’s windy and someone loses their lawn furniture cushions, they’ll end up out there, too. There are 2X4s with nails in them. The kids put the boards over the ravine and bound over them. They call it ‘The Ditch.’”

“There’s a pond with tall reeds and Red-winged Blackbirds, and kids get tadpoles and frogs,” his wife, Anne, added.

I almost swooned. It sounded idyllic! But that was great for the kids in their neighborhood. What about the other kids?

I called Scott McBeath in Pullman the next day. Surely he’d know something. Talking to him, I suddenly understood his passion for getting kids excited about and skilled at biking. For kids, bikes mean freedom, and freedom is good.

This of course raises the question of at what age kids should be able to head off on

their own, which every family has to answer for themselves. “I think you have to be brave and swim upstream,” Britt said. “You have to be brave and make the choices that are right for your family.”

So why exactly, in my quest to support kids in finding and creating these places themselves, away from adults, was I riding my bike on the hard-packed dirt of Moscow and Pullman with my ten-year-old, repeating, “Oh my gosh, okay, oh my gosh, okay,” every time I went over a bump?

The pump track scared my pants off, but was strangely addictive. My son’s immediate reaction was, “This is awesome! I want to build a pump track!” I didn’t tell him it had taken volunteers (Scott McBeath among them) 500 hours to build the pump track at PCEI—but he’d probably still want to make one anyway. Besides, digging in the dirt is good for people. As my friend

Rebekka reports, freshly back in Moscow from a visit to the Netherlands, people there who are dealing with mental illness or severe work-related stress get to spend a year working on an organic farm.

McBeath suggested the Pullman river trail, which stretches from Koppel Farm up toward the movie theater, as a place where kids can wander. There are beaver dams and it’s really pretty amazing, he said. Volunteers built the trail and kids help to remove the wooden plank bridges each winter so they don’t get washed out and then put them back in the spring. When my son and I were there we saw quail and minnows and many nests.

Once we had left the paved path and the wood chips and were riding along on the dirt, I knew there was no way I was falling into the water off of one of those narrow little bridges, I just put my feet down for balance every time I

playgrounds in the U.S. today are so bound playgrounds in the U.S. today are so bound playgrounds

this

6 ‹‹‹ August 27, 2014 ‹‹‹ MOSCOWPULLMAN DAILY NEWS For Kids. By Kids. ‹‹‹ VOICE OF THE YOUTHrode over a wooden plank. By the

time we were heading back, I was so focused on the trail that

I whammed my (helmeted) head hard into a low and massive tree

branch, the impact of which sent me and my bike into the creek at the next available entry point.

Flat on my butt in the deep, rich mud.

I had my son haul my bike out of the creek, then suddenly realized: photo op. I had him push it back in so I could take a picture.

On our way over to the river trail, I’d asked my son if there were any outdoor places around here where kids could go and do what they wanted, apart from kids who live right by woods. He thought not. “In cities literally everything you do is supervised, even if it’s not your parents doing it. So unless there’s a sign that says ‘no parents’ or ‘no adults,’ the little kids start coming with their parents or some babysitter, and then a lot of little kids and their babysitters and parents start coming. So

unless you have a sign that says ‘no supervision allowed,’ that’s the only

thing that would work.” So where can kids go without

supervision? In Moscow, Tom Lamar, director of PCEI, told me that “all the time kids show up here and play and do activities. Sometimes older kids come and want to volunteer.” PCEI has a “playscape,” with multiple ways that kids can play, including a plum grove tunnel and a stump jump. Heather Huston, education coordinator at PCEI, described the plum grove as “kind of a tree fort, a tunnel, that is really fun for people of all ages.” Lamar said kids can also hang out at Lola Clyde park, the unsigned five-acre property immediately adjacent to PCEI at Polk and Rodeo.

To get to the river trail in Pullman, stand at the three-way intersection of the paved path by Koppel Farm with the big rock in the center, facing Bishop Boulevard. Then look to your right for the bark-lined path and take that down to the dirt path.

Judy Sobeloff is a teaching artist and freelance writer who lives with her family in Moscow. To let her know your thoughts on this topic, or about things being done by kids or for kids in the community, email her at jsobeloff@dnews.com with “for VotY ” in the subject line.

rode over a wooden plank. By the

I whammed my (helmeted) head hard into a low and massive tree I whammed my (helmeted) head

hard into a low and massive tree I whammed my (helmeted) head

mud. I had my son haul my bike out of

the creek, then suddenly realized: I had my son haul my bike out of

the creek, then suddenly realized: I had my son haul my bike out of

photo op. I had him push it back in the creek, then suddenly realized: photo op. I had him push it back in the creek, then suddenly realized:

so I could take a picture. photo op. I had him push it back in so I could take a picture. photo op. I had him push it back in

On our way over to the river trail, so I could take a picture.

On our way over to the river trail, so I could take a picture.

I’d asked my son if there were any On our way over to the river trail,

I’d asked my son if there were any On our way over to the river trail,

outdoor places around here where I’d asked my son if there were any outdoor places around here where I’d asked my son if there were any

kids could go and do what they outdoor places around here where kids could go and do what they outdoor places around here where

wanted, apart from kids who live kids could go and do what they wanted, apart from kids who live kids could go and do what they

right by woods. He thought not. “In wanted, apart from kids who live right by woods. He thought not. “In wanted, apart from kids who live

cities literally everything you do right by woods. He thought not. “In cities literally everything you do right by woods. He thought not. “In

is supervised, even if it’s not your cities literally everything you do is supervised, even if it’s not your cities literally everything you do

parents doing it. So unless there’s is supervised, even if it’s not your parents doing it. So unless there’s is supervised, even if it’s not your

a sign that says ‘no parents’ or parents doing it. So unless there’s a sign that says ‘no parents’ or parents doing it. So unless there’s

unless you have a sign that says ‘no supervision allowed,’ that’s the only

unless you have a sign that says ‘no supervision allowed,’ that’s the only

unless you have a sign that says ‘no

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MOSCOWPULLMAN DAILY NEWS ››› August 27, 2014 ››› 7VOICE OF THE YOUTH ››› For Kids. By Kids.

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� ‹‹‹ August 27, 2014 ‹‹‹ Moscow-PullMan Daily news For Kids. By Kids. ‹‹‹ Voice of the Youth