This article appears in the Spring 2024 Long Trail News, titled “Let Go of Expectations: GMC Burlington Revives the Young Adventurers Club.”
GMC has a long history of getting kids out to experience Vermont’s mountains and trails. James P. Taylor, founder and visionary of the Long Trail, was originally inspired to bring students at Vermont Academy, where he was an assistant principal, out hiking.
In 2006 Lexi Shear and her late husband David Blumenthal, of GMC’s Montpelier Section, started the Young Adventurers Club, aimed at getting kids ages 0-10 and their grown-ups out and about on the trails. The group has dual purposes: Help families access the outdoors and build an appreciation for nature in their children; and help GMC cultivate the next generation of hikers, stewards, and club members to invigorate the club into future decades.
Young families are stretched thin these days, and the YAC, which had since spread to the Burlington, NEK, and Bread Loaf Sections, among others, largely disbanded during the pandemic.
Last spring, Corinn Julow, new member of the Burlington Section, committed to getting the group back off the ground, starting slowly with monthly leisurely outings fit for children of all ages.
“I emulated my first few hikes off the Montpelier Section model,” Corinn explains. That meant trying to tailor hikes for kids under 6, and 6-10. But with low attendance on the first several outings, that wasn’t a practical approach.
“Now, I ask myself ‘What could a four- and six-year-old do?’ I try to keep everything to about two miles, relatively flat. We plan for about two hours and keep things really easy going.”
The monthly outings typically meet Saturdays at 10 a.m., to work around nap schedules, at trail networks convenient to the greater Burlington area. The Long Trail proves too rugged and out of the way for most toddlers and their caregivers, but places like 100 Acre Wood in Fairfax, and Russell Greene Natural Area in Georgia offer flat trails and plenty of mud puddles and wildlife to keep the littlest feet and minds occupied.
“Destinations don’t mean a single thing [to a child],” Corinn observes. In fact, it’s often counterproductive to plan a hike around a destination, because then the adults get fixated on that destination while kids may be fixated on, well, the ground in front of them.
“My biggest takeaway so far is that to be successful, you can’t have any expectation,” when hiking with kids, Corinn explains. If you were planning to reach a summit, but the kids are fascinated by millipedes for 45 minutes (like on a recent outing), that summit must be saved for another day.
Corinn lives in North Hero and is an active community member. Her own two kids are grown, but her niece sometimes joins the group, and her experience as a parent and community volunteer made her perfect for the role.
Winter hikes have had the added challenge of contending with the cold and varying needs of babies and kids of all ages. Corinn’s goals for the next phase of the program are to schedule events several months ahead, and spread awareness of the outings by promoting in parents and kids-oriented community forums.
Visit the Burlington Section’s website for upcoming YAC Outings: gmcburlington.org
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