Safety Third: An Outdoor Education

It was cold and raining—the kind of chill that cuts straight through your bones. Lunch had just begun, and suddenly, I was hit with a wave of emotion that’s hard to put into words.

Looking around our Outsiders Adventure Base Camp, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing—though I see it every week. Kids were everywhere: digging massive holes, stoking campfires to keep warm, riding motorcycles through the mud, building BMX jumps, playing football and gaga ball (so much gaga ball), constructing forts from wood and sticks, editing YouTube videos.

This is an Outdoor Education at its finest.

Absolute chaos.

All of it kid-led.

Safety?

Let’s just say it ranks somewhere around third.

But that’s not what overwhelmed me. Yes, it’s incredible. Yes, it’s wild and free and completely extraordinary. But what gets me every time—what leaves me in awe—is this: they almost never get hurt.

How?

How is it that when a five-foot-deep hole is dug, no one ever falls in? How do the littlest kids know not to ride on the giant BMX jumps? How do 12th graders and 3rd graders play tackle football together—and enjoy it? How do beginners and weekend racers share the same muddy trails on motorcycles, with nothing but laughter between them? No one has ever wandered off our 9-acre property. It’s a miracle.

Actually, it’s one thing: community.

From the beginning, Outsiders Adventure has fought for community—real, messy, life-giving community. That’s the secret.

Kids don’t fall into holes because the diggers choose safe spots and keep watch over the others. Big kids build little jumps beside their massive ones so the younger ones can ride too. The older kids go easy on the littles, include them in the fun, and create side by side with them. The "Littles" (as we affectionately call them) look up to the "Bigs" with admiration—and the Bigs carry that responsibility with care.

Isn’t this how life is meant to be lived?

Make no mistake—we’re serious about learning. Parents often ask how instruction happens here. And of course, we have brilliant guides who love teaching and do it exceptionally well. But what we pursue above all else is community. We fight for it, we protect it, and we believe in it.

And guess what happens? Every time. Parents return after a few months, amazed by how much their children have learned. The answer is simple: community.

John Holt, in How Children Learn, wrote:

“First, vivid, vital, pleasurable experiences are the easiest to remember, and secondly, that memory works best when unforced, that it is not a mule that can be made to walk by beating, and further that electrical fields are set up in the brain when we perceive, think, and feel.”

If that’s true, then maybe—just maybe—Outsiders Adventure has discovered the perfect elixir for learning: a thriving community of kids, of all ages, free to create vivid, beautiful, and sensory-rich experiences that truly engage the mind.

We’ve built a place where kids look out for one another, learn together, stay warm together, and go on wild adventures—together. And in that, they grow in ways no one thought possible.

So here’s the challenge: Will you fight to build community wherever you are? Because the rewards are beyond measure—and they just might leave you standing in the rain, awestruck.

Come join us.

– Seth Johnson