For years, when people have asked me what STEAM in the PARK is, my answer has been simple: "We're an outdoor education nonprofit." It's an easy answer, and it's true.

This summer has given me the gift of seeing our work through fresh eyes. Seven camps. Seven national parks. Hundreds of educators, families, children, park rangers, volunteers, scientists, and partners sharing trails, meals, campfires, and conversations. As I look back, I don't find myself thinking about lesson plans, schedules, or logistics. I think about people.

​And then I realize this story didn't begin this summer.

Since 2021, we've shared 54 STEAM in the PARK adventures in national parks across the country. Thousands of moments have unfolded on trails, around campfires, in classrooms without walls, and beside rivers, oceans, forests, deserts, and mountains. Looking back across all of those experiences, the pattern is unmistakable.

I don't remember the schedules nearly as much as I remember the people.

I think about the educator who arrived carrying the weight of an entire school year on her shoulders. You could almost see the exhaustion she was trying so hard to hide. Then somewhere between a hike, a conversation with a ranger, and an evening around the campfire, something shifted. She smiled differently. She laughed more freely. She remembered what it felt like to be curious instead of responsible, to ask questions instead of always having the answers. She went home carrying something much more valuable than classroom resources. She went home carrying hope.

I think about the families. Families who spend most of the year rushing from soccer practice to homework, from work meetings to grocery stores, from one obligation to the next. Then suddenly, they're sitting beside a campfire with nowhere else they're supposed to be. There aren't notifications demanding their attention. There are just stories, marshmallows, stars, children asking one more question, and parents answering without looking at a clock. I wonder how many families rediscovered one another simply because nature slowed them down long enough to notice each other again.

I think about the little girl at Rocky Mountain Family Camp. She walked into our opening circle, looked around at fifty-six strangers, and quietly said, "Everyone looks so happy. I hope that's what happens all week." By Friday, those strangers were hugging goodbye. Children were crying because they didn't want camp to end. Adults were exchanging phone numbers. Families were already making plans to meet again. Somehow, in just a few days, a campground had become a community.

I think about our national parks. Some people see breathtaking scenery. We see living classrooms where every trail tells a story, every ecosystem asks another question, and every landscape invites us to slow down and pay attention. These places remind us that science isn't confined to textbooks and history isn't trapped inside museums. They remind us that wonder is still alive if we're willing to look for it.

And then there are the park rangers. I wish everyone could see what we see. Week after week, they step away from overflowing inboxes, resource management meetings, visitor questions, emergency calls, and countless responsibilities to spend time with our campers. They don't simply teach. They invite us into their world. They share why the elk matter, why the forests matter, why the rivers matter, and why every salamander, sea turtle, dragonfly, prairie dog, hoodoo, glacier, marsh, and mountain has a story worth protecting. Their passion is contagious. Their knowledge is remarkable. Their generosity changes lives. I don't think we will ever fully be able to thank them for all they have given to our campers over the years.

The longer I do this work, the more convinced I become that our national parks are one of America's greatest gifts. Not simply because they are beautiful, although they certainly are. They are gifts because they remind us who we are when the noise fades away. They remind us that conservation is deeply personal, that families grow stronger when they share adventures, that communities can still be built around picnic tables and campfires, and that strangers don't always stay strangers.

Maybe that's why STEAM in the PARK has become so difficult to describe. It isn't just about education anymore. Education is still at the heart of everything we do, but it has become the doorway. On the other side of that doorway, we've found something much bigger than we ever imagined. We've found people rediscovering joy. We've found friendships that continue long after camp ends. We've found families creating stories they'll tell for decades. We've found educators who return home believing in themselves again. We've found children who suddenly believe they could become scientists, wildlife biologists, artists, teachers, or park rangers because someone believed in them first.

When I really think about it, STEAM in the PARK isn't just about conservation, although we care deeply about protecting these incredible places. It isn't just about mental wellness, though time outdoors has a remarkable way of healing tired hearts. It isn't just about teacher renewal, family connection, scientific literacy, outdoor recreation, public lands, or building communities where everyone feels welcome.

It's about all of those things, woven together.

Fifty-four camps have taught me that the scenery changes, the ecosystems change, the wildlife changes, and the people change. But what happens in those places never really does. People arrive carrying heavy things they didn't even realize they were carrying. They leave lighter. They leave connected. They leave believing that this world is still full of beauty, goodness, and possibility.

Maybe STEAM in the PARK was never just about teaching people about national parks.
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Maybe it has always been about helping people find their way back.

A few days ago, I was scrolling and stopped on a post written by a Cherokee man. He used a word I had never heard before: Gadugi. I kept reading, and then I did what I do. I opened another tab. Then another one. I started researching because I wanted to know what the word meant and why it had stopped me in my tracks.

The Cherokee Nation describes Gadugi as “working together for the common good,” and well, that will make you sit with yourself for a minute. I want to say this carefully because the word is rooted in Cherokee culture and I am not a teacher of Cherokee culture. I am not trying to borrow a word and turn it into a cute saying for a T-shirt. I simply read something shared by a Cherokee man, listened, went looking to learn more, and found myself thinking about a word I have used for years: kindness.

We love kindness. I love kindness. We put BE KIND on shirts and school walls and stickers and hashtags. I have typed #BeKind more times than I could ever count, and I meant it every single time. But I have been wondering if sometimes I have made kindness a little too comfortable.

A smile is kind. A compliment is kind. Holding the door for someone is kind. Sending the text, saying the good thing out loud, and checking on a friend are kind. All of it matters. Mercy, it matters. But “working together for the common good” asks more of me. It asks what I do when the work is inconvenient. It asks whether I will help carry something heavy when it isn't mine. It asks whether I will make room before someone has to beg for a seat. It asks what I am willing to give when nobody is going to clap, post a picture, hand me a certificate, or even know I was there.

Maybe I notice this so much because I spend so much of my life outside. Nature is not very interested in slogans. A fallen tree becomes a nurse log and gives what is left of itself to what comes next. Fungi make connections underground that most of us will never see. Roots hold soil. Flowers feed pollinators, and pollinators carry possibility somewhere else. Salmon return nutrients to rivers and forests. Nobody out there is keeping score, but everything is connected and nothing flourishes alone.

I keep coming back to that. Maybe kindness was never supposed to mean just being nice. Maybe kindness needs hands and feet and a strong back every now and then. Maybe kindness notices who is carrying too much and quietly grabs the other end. Maybe kindness looks around the table and realizes someone is missing. Maybe kindness speaks when silence would be much easier. Maybe kindness does some work.

I will never stop believing in #BeKind. I still think those two little words can change a classroom, a family, a community, and a whole lot of days that are hanging on by a thread. But I want my kindness to roll up its sleeves. I want it to carry the heavy thing and make room. I want it to plant trees whose shade I will never sit under. I want to remember that my flourishing should never require someone else to wither.

Gadugi is not my word to redefine, but I can listen to the people whose word it is. I can learn. I can be grateful that a Cherokee man chose to share it in a place where I happened to read it, and I can let the idea of “working together for the common good” ask some hard questions about the way I am living.

So yes, be kind. I will keep saying it and I will keep believing it. But maybe today I need to ask myself one more question: Is my kindness willing to work?

#BeKind #Gadugi

I have loved this song since I was a little girl. My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. I loved the way the words filled a room. I loved standing beside other people and singing something we all somehow knew. I loved the swell of it, the hope of it, the certainty of it. And all these years later, after seeing more of this country than that little girl could have ever imagined, I still love it. Maybe more now. Maybe differently. But goodness, I still love it.

Because now when I sing my country, I see her. I see mountains catching the first light of morning and rivers winding through places no road could ever reach. I see red rock rising out of desert soil and waves beating against a coastline as if they have been keeping time since the beginning of the world. I see forests where fallen trees become the beginning of something new, salmon fighting their way home, and fireflies blinking in the darkness with absolutely no idea how desperately some of us needed to see a little light.

But I also see the humans. Lord, I see the humans. Not the ones screaming at one another from opposite sides of a screen. Not the ones we are told represent all of us because anger makes better television and division keeps us watching. I see the humans carrying an extra water bottle because somebody might need it. I see the one who slows down on the trail without making the person behind feel slow. I see meals cooked for people who were strangers three days ago and chairs scooted closer because there is always room for one more.

I have watched park rangers kneel in the dirt to show a group of teachers something so small most people would walk right past it. I have watched educators stand in forests with tears running down their faces because somewhere between the moss and the mountains they remembered a part of themselves they thought life had taken. I have watched people dance with strangers, share their first s'more, laugh until they could barely breathe, and call across the darkness, “We are family now.” Tell me goodness is gone, and I will tell you that you simply have not been looking in the right places.

Maybe that is what breaks my heart most about where we are right now. We have been convinced that the loudest people are the most plentiful. We have mistaken cruelty for the character of a country and anger for the language of an entire people. We scroll past ten thousand quiet acts of goodness to stare at one terrible thing, and then we go to bed believing the terrible thing is all there is.

But nature knows better. A nurse log does not announce that it is giving the last of itself back to the forest. A river does not demand applause for carrying life downstream. A cedar does not keep count of every creature sheltered beneath its branches. The wildflowers do not refuse to bloom because the flower beside them is a different color. The mountains have never once asked us to agree before allowing all of us to stand in their shadow.

Perhaps this land has been trying to teach us how to belong to one another since long before we ever learned the words sweet land of liberty. Out here, nothing flourishes alone. The salmon need the river. The forest needs the fallen tree. The flowers need the bees, and the bees need the flowers. Life is passed back and forth in a thousand invisible exchanges, each one whispering the same truth we seem determined to forget: your flourishing and mine were never meant to be separate things.

I am not naive about this country. Loving her does not require me to close my eyes to her wounds. I know there are stories we have failed to tell and people we have failed to see. I know liberty has not always felt sweet to everyone who has sung those words. Love that refuses to tell the truth is not love at all. But neither is despair the only honest response to a complicated story.

I have walked too many miles across this country to believe that hatred is the truest thing about us. I have sat at too many tables where someone made room. I have watched too many hands reach backward on a trail. I have seen people give what they had, carry what someone else could not, and stand beside one another when walking away would have been so much easier. I have seen goodness in hiking boots and ranger hats, behind steering wheels and cafeteria counters, around campfires and beside hospital beds. It is everywhere, y'all. It just rarely has a microphone.

So yes, I still love this song. I still feel something rise in me when I hear my country, ’tis of thee. Not because I believe we have become everything those words ask us to be, but because I still believe we can keep becoming. I believe in the land that keeps showing us what connection looks like, and I believe in the good humans who wake up every morning and choose to make their small corner of it kinder.

Maybe freedom ringing does not always sound like a bell from a mountaintop. Maybe sometimes it sounds like a chair scraping across the floor as someone says, “Sit here.” Maybe it sounds like a name being remembered, a meal being shared, a hand reaching back, or a voice crossing the darkness to tell someone they are family now. Maybe the sweetest sound of liberty is another human being looking at you and saying, without hesitation or condition, “You belong here too.”

My country, ’tis of thee. I loved you as a little girl who knew the words but had barely seen the land she was singing about. I love you now as a woman who has stood beneath your trees, walked beside your rivers, crossed your deserts, watched the sun fall behind your mountains, and met your people. You are beautiful. You are bruised. You are complicated. You are still becoming.

And I still believe there is so much goodness here.

I have seen it with my own eyes.