We're in the Goo -- What a blind father, a broken wood stove, and a bed bug infestation taught two dads about raising outdoor kids

Alex Terry's father has been blind most of his life.

He couldn't drive. Couldn't see the trailhead signs or the snow conditions or the line down the mountain. But he could get excited. And when a young Alex came home from school talking about some upcoming adventure — a ski trip, a canoe trip, a bike ride through the neighborhood that would inevitably turn into something more ambitious — his father would light up. Not politely. Genuinely.

That's what started it.

Not a perfect outdoor education. Not expert instruction. Not the right gear or the ideal conditions. A blind man getting excited about something he couldn't see — and making his son feel like the world outside was worth running toward.

I've been thinking about that story since I sat down with Alex Terry last week.

Alex is a dad, an educator, a conservationist, and my close friend. He grew up in New Hampshire scampering through the woods behind his parents' house — the kind of kid whose friends were warned to bring a change of clothes. He spent most of his adult life in the western United States, working in wilderness therapy, leading groups through the Sierra Nevada and the Colorado Rockies, riding motorcycles through Baja California, skiing glaciers in Iceland.

A year ago, he and his wife Jesse moved back to the East Coast with their then-infant son Samson. Closer to family. Closer to the ecosystem they both grew up in.

And then reality arrived.

The cross-country move did not go the way Alex had imagined.

Samson got sick. Alex got food poisoning. Jesse drove while Alex sat in the backseat with a sick baby and a diaper tucked into his waistband, trying to make miles across Indiana at two in the morning. They checked into a hotel. Alex was sweating through the sheets. Jesse looked over and saw bed bugs.

They packed up and kept moving.

When they finally reached the East Coast and were supposed to have this slow, unrushed family time — Alex decided they needed to sleep in an uninsulated cabin accessible only by trail. Howling wind. Blowing snow. Sixteen degrees. A wood stove that wouldn't latch. Slats in the walls.

Samson, somehow, was fine.

Alex and Jesse were up all night. They left at dawn.

Here's what Alex said about that trip, and I haven't stopped thinking about it since:

"We realized we're not just trying to adapt Samson to our old life. We're new people. We refer to it as the chrysalis — like when a caterpillar becomes a butterfly, if you cut it open, it's goo. We're in the goo phase."

I know that phase. When my son was three months old, I decided a road trip to Telluride from San Diego was a reasonable idea. He was born at sea level. He got altitude sickness and an ear infection. We ended up in the emergency room at three in the morning because we didn't have Tylenol and he had a fever. I remember the heat of his fever on my skin and thinking: I am the worst possible human in the history of the universe.

We were both in the goo.

What Alex has figured out — what I think this episode is really about — is that the goo is not a failure state. It's a transition state. You don't skip it. You don't optimize your way out of it. You move through it slowly, usually covered in some combination of mud, baby food, and regret, until something shifts.

For Alex, the shift came when he watched Samson discover his strider bike. Nineteen months old, gliding around the yard, completely absorbed by the sensation of movement. No glacier required. No motorcycle. No uninsulated cabin in a blizzard.

Just a kid, a bike, and a backyard.

"The adventure of wandering around in the backyard is so much of an adventure for him," Alex told me. "It's mind-blowing. Even though for us we're just stuck at home."

Alex now works as Regional Stewardship Manager with the Maine Island Trail Association, leading staff and volunteers in trail stewardship projects on the outlying islands of Northeast Maine. He spends his days thinking about how to get people onto the water, onto the islands, into places that ask something of them.

His closing thought in our conversation is the one I'd hand to every outdoor educator, every parent, every program director who has ever felt the pressure to make nature experiences big enough, radical enough, impressive enough to matter:

"Outdoor access can look like just having enough toilet paper in the bathrooms."

That's it. That's the whole philosophy. Create a space where someone feels physically and emotionally safe. Reduce your expectation of what a meaningful outdoor experience has to look like. A walk in a neighborhood park can be as impactful on a young person's relationship with nature as a backpacking trip. It just depends on how you show up.

Alex's father showed up blind and excited. It was enough.

Listen to this week's episode of Hopeful by Nature wherever you get your podcasts.

Learn more about Alex's work with the Maine Island Trail Association at mita.org and follow them on social media at @meislandtrail.

And if something in this conversation moves you — reach out. I'll keep collecting these stories as long as people keep living them.

— Scott

Wildward Institute supports organizations, educators, and parents building meaningful relationships between young people and the outdoors. Learn more at wildwardinstitute.net.

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