After being moved to a couple different schools, I quit high school teaching without a plan for the future. My teaching salary of $600.00 a month didn't provide much opportunity to save. I was living on very little money but had child support payments. Since adversity often provides opportunity, I turned to my skills in organizing and guiding student wilderness experiences plus several courses in outdoor education and survival training.
Portland Community College had a Department of Community Education that did not offer any courses in outdoor skills. They accepted my proposals for classes in backpacking, family camping and x-country skiing. The Western Forestry Center was seeking a certified teacher for a course titled, Man, Trees & Society. I was given an office and use of the Center support staff, but no pay unless I created successful programs that earned any money. Having had no science background, I rewrote the course following a model developed by the National Park Service and added components in the arts including poetry, wood sculpting and architectural design then ended the class with instructors from OSU Department of Forestry and a field trip to their research forest. The WFC offered several sessions of the Junior Foresters Week that I designed. In the evenings and weekends, I taught outdoor education classes for PCC's Department of Community Education.
During one of my Western Forestry courses, a woman in the class suggested that I develop a forestry based educational tour to Hawaii. Since the WFC had all the resources and contacts, I did the research and planning as we offered - Forests & Gardens of Hawaii. With a group of eight people we toured Kauai, Maui and Hawaii on an 18 day camping and cabin trip. I drove our 12 passenger van, set up the tents, cooked the meals on an Optimus stove and enjoyed the beauty of Hawaiian beaches, forests and gardens. Through the WFC's contacts, we were able to visit private gardens while we hiked and explored state and national forests and had access to many of the National Park Service facilities. At each location, we were met by garden experts, foresters and National Park Service educators. If you visited Hawaii in the early 1970's, you know how "local" it was with uncrowded roads, towns and parks.
One afternoon while setting a beach camp on Maui, I met a young biology teacher from Ft. Lewis College in stressful tears. She had 15 students on a Hawaiian Botany class that was not going well for her. We shared ideas on a Hawaiian program that afternoon and returned to our own groups. The second time we met at Volcanoes National Park in Hawaii, she was beyond stress in trying to manage both teaching and operating the logistics of driving, camping and feeding the students. I suggested that, perhaps, I could run the land portion of her course and she focus on the teaching.
Back at my office in the Western Forestry Center, I had an idea to develop a travel program to New Zealand. In my research, I found that their National Park system had cabins and cooking facilities. The program possibilities began to grow in my mind with staying in some of these cabins, day hiking on the Routeburn and Milford tracks, visiting sheep farms, exploring craft towns and traveling in a passenger van similar to what I drove in Hawaii. The possibilities seemed endless. We could stay there for 25 days and really explore the two islands.
I was called into the office of the Center's Executive Director and told that, though they appreciated all that I had been doing in my non-paid position, they needed my office and I would need to vacate it by the end of the week.
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| Forests & Gardens of Hawaii Campsite (1975) |
HAPUNA BEACH
(For Christine)
Waves rolling 4 or 5 at Hapuna Beach
pidgin-tongued young men hold flippers
blue
or
red
their
sunrise eyes have examined the surf
diagnosing it fit
overhead palms rusted by age
clap with the wind
pidgin-tongued young men dash
through flickering shadows
drawn to sea in a lemming rush
Waves rolling 5 or 6 at Hapuna Beach
Children play on white sand
nude
always nude
old men stare out
wistfully
committing the day to times gone by
pidgin-tongued young men
flippers
surf
5 or 6
children nude
dash through dreams
of wistful old men
David Christopher - Hapuna Beach Hawaii (1975)
