Outings - Rockport
ICO/ZUMIX Trip Report: Halibut Point State Park, Rockport, MA March 12, 2000
Despite some last-minute changes in our plan as well as some pretty nasty weather, our outing with the ZUMIX gang up to State Park in Rockport turned out to a smashing success. Our original plan of taking the kids skating was waylaid when MDC closed down the Brighton skating rink on Saturday due to the warm weather. For lack of a better contingency plan for an indoors outing, Brian and I decided (upon Craig's suggestion) to simply bring the kids to a park to get outdoors for at least a little while despite the weather. We chose Halibut Point State Park in Rockport because it offers some pretty interesting geologic features, it's easy to get to from East Boston, and it has walking paths.
Leave it to these kids to make you remember why you like spending time outdoors. The bottom line was these kids were simply ecstatic to be outside doing virtually anything. I think if we told them we were going to blast granite and haul it up a mountain by hand, they would have beamed with delight. For the duration of the outing, I didn't hear a single peep about the weather. You'd have thought it was 70F and sunny. Highlights of the kids' natural history catalog for the day included: one dead crab (awesome!), sea foam, tsunami waves, patterns etched in granite, furry reindeer sumac (it's alive!), decaying wood, and a "dead man" (an iron hinge set in granite).
One of the things that made for such an exuberant outing was an infusion of new faces. Of the eleven kids, I think only Andrea and Cindy were ZUMIX "old-timers." For the others, this was their first outing. The kids needed no encouragement to engage in a variety of impromptu activities such as building rock cairns, practicing their echo capabilities on the edge of the granite quarry, poking at dead marine life and other detritus. My personal favorite was ocean defiance, whereby the kids dared the incoming waves crashing upon the rocks to spray them. Predictably, some of them got rather wet, so we made sure to head back to the vans quickly thereafter. At a few junctures their enthusiasm made me a little nervous, such as when Justin ventured very close to the edge of the quarry to look for "dead bodies in the water." With few exceptions, however, the kids responded very well to the instructions and limits we established.
Even with such a relatively small group of kids, there was a vast range of physical abilities, adventurousness, and conditioning levels on display. Some of the kids, notably Eric, Angel, and Justin, displayed enough kinetic energy to power a small municipality. A few other kids struggled with the pace set by the main group even though the total distance covered in our walk was probably between a quarter- and a half-mile. One item I would like to raise for discussion among ICO volunteers is strategies for developing outings that challenge the kids to an appropriate extent without compromising safety.
Group Demographics
The ZUMIX kids who participated on this outing included:
* Martha and Eric (ages 11 and 8)
* Ricardo and Leanie (ages 12 and 9)
* Christopher (age 13)
* Justin (age 9)
* Andrea (age 13)
* Milton (age 12)
* Cindy (age 13)
* Angel and Herrardo (ages 5 and 6)Michelle Manion and Brian Blake were the ICO Volunteers on this trip. We were accompanied by Carlos and Nick of the ZUMIX staff.
The ZUMIX group on this outing had many new faces and just a few familiar faces. On average, the group was slightly younger than previous ZUMIX groups. Ages of the kids ranged from 5 to 13; the average age was 10 and the median age was 11. I think Angel and Herrardo may have been the youngest participants I've had on an outing. The gender ratio was more heavy on boys (7), but the girls (4) made up in enthusiasm what they lacked in numbers, especially Martha and Leanie.
- Michelle Manion
