Interview: Scott Turner (Orienteering, Hiking, Skiing, Camping, Biking, ​Backpacking )

This week we have an interview with an outdoor parent whose children are grown up, so he has the perspective of taking them outdoors through all the stages of childhood. He is also a very experienced at orienteering, which I think is a great way to get kids outside that I haven't tried yet with my kids. He also happens to be my uncle, and when I was a kid I got to go orienteering with them. Enjoy!

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Name: Scott Turner
Location: Suburban Boston, MA, USA
Family Activities: hiking, orienteering, cross-country skiing (and a little downhill), car camping, swimming   
less regularly canoeing, bicycling on dedicated paths, hiking the AMC hut system, backpacking
​Kids: 38, 36, and 32
Work Schedule: ​I worked full time regular daytime hours. My wife was a homemaker full time until the kids entered 1st through 6th grade. She led their home schooling from that point through high school. When the youngest reached 11 years, she began part time work.​

Transitioning to parenthood:

1. What outdoor activities did you do before you had kids? Together we enjoyed hiking, cross-country skiing, canoeing, bicycling, and swimming. We tried backpacking but my wife did not enjoy it. I had also done a good deal of small boat sailing earlier in my life.
2. If you or your spouse were pregnant, did that person continue any of the activities and how did they modify the activity while pregnant? My wife transitioned from jogging to walking for her pregnancy.
3. If you do different activities after having kids, why is that? A lot of things changed from 1978 until our first child was born four years later. We had returned to New England, got new jobs, met, courted, married, and settled in a suburban house. It's more noteworthy how little our activities changed.
   
   A significant change for me was that during my wife's first pregnancy I took up the sport of orienteering. I began to participate in the local orienteering competitions which were regularly scheduled in wooded areas around Boston. It combined running, which until then I had done on the roads, with map skills, which I had developed while backpacking.
4. How old were your kids when you started doing outdoor activities with them? We may have waited a couple of months before taking them on trails in the hills, but essentially we went outdoors immediately. It was snowing when our first child came home from the hospital.
5. What was your biggest challenge when you started doing outdoor activities with the kids? Executing a car camping trip for a week at a New Hampshire campground, with a variety of excursions, was a big effort, and once it rained the whole week!

Outdoor parenting:

1. How have these challenges changed as the kids got older? We and the kids were involved in other activites -- church, dance, soccer, etc. that made time for activities in nature more scarce.
2. Do you have trouble maintaining the kids interest in the activity (ie during a long hike) and if you do, how do you keep the kids interested?  Keeping them going during a long hike was definitely a thing. It helped to have an intermediate goal, and say, "In one mile we'll come to a rest spot and have a snack." We also had a couple of trail games that we played. Some of our long hikes were with cousins, which was great for preventing boredom.
3. How do you fit the activities into your working life?  I would take the family or just a couple of the kids to an orienteering event on a Saturday or Sunday, as these were part-day activities in (mostly) local woods. Occasionally we would travel for a few hours to a big weekend orienteering event, camping overnight. A couple of the nicer events had square dancing in the evening.  The kids' favorite was a weekend at Pawtuckaway State Park in New Hampshire, which had regular orienteering, canoe orienteering, and an after dark "Vampire orienteering" event followed by smores..
   Occasionally I would take some of our kids with some of their friends for a hike, such as Mt. Monadnock.
   In the summers we would do at least a week of car camping that involved a good deal of hiking and sometimes canoeing.
   
   
4. How do you balance outdoor activities with kids activities (organized sports, music, school)?  Those activities almost always took precedence. Given that the kids all either played soccer or had dance rehearsals, I can't recall how we got away for as many weekends as we did.
5. If you have a partner, how do you ensure that both of you can keep doing your outdoor activities? My wife was content to keep in shape by walking in the neighborhood streets, and enjoy the more natural scenery during an occasional parents' or family getaway. We both consider aerobic exercise important. I would make it a priority to take care of the kids while she went for a walk, and she was wonderfully flexible in letting me spend half the Saturday orienteering. She also let me get out for 2 or 3 shortish runs on weekdays. For a while I was going for a two mile run after work with one of the kids.
6. Have you ever received pushback on outdoor parenting from family, friends, or community? If so, how have you handled it? I don't think our friends understood that we were sending our little kids into unfamiliar woods on their own with just a map and compass.  :-)
   We attended church as a family very regularly on Sunday mornings. If we went away for a weekend, we would miss church of course, and my wife and I would kid ourselves about "playing hookey" from church. But no pushback. Massachusetts churches are grateful for whatever attendance and support they get.

Summary/Conclusion:

1. What resources helped you figure out how to do these outdoor activities with your kids? (books, friends, groups, blogs, etc).  We both grew up in families that enjoyed hiking and car camping, and knew the basics. What led us to wonderful times wasn't so much "how to" guides, as friends, maps, articles and even travel guides that clued us in to great places. For what it's worth, the most memorable are: * White Mountains, NH * Baxter State Park, Maine * Appalachian Mountain Club Huts, NH * Fransted Family Campground, Franconia, NH * Umbagog Lake, New Hampshire & Maine * Kejimkujik National Park, Nova Scotia * Maine Wilderness Camps, Maine * Up North Orienteers Camping Weekend, NH​
2. If you’re a writer, what are the blog posts, articles, books, videos that you have written/created that you think would most help other families? Recommended hikes with kids in the White Mountains
3. What is your favorite outdoor parenting hack? Once we had kids, car camping assumed a more considerable role compared to backpacking. To make a great leap beyond the lightweight backpacking mattress I went to a local fabric store and bought 4" thick foam that was plenty long enough for my 6' sleeping bag. And similarly for my wife, except 5" thick. Sewed up a fabric cover over the foam and we parents had great mattresses. Kids with their smaller bones were content with the backpacking pads.
   I must mention a hack of a completely different kind. For our family, getting into the outdoors necessarily meant getting away from screens. What to do after dark? Invent and tell tall tales to one another. 
4. What is your biggest outdoor parenting mistake?  Once we hiked from the valley up to the Franconia Ridge. We had rewarding snacks along; the problem was that they were not guarded sufficiently. Just as we were starting down again on the steepest part of the trail, our 8 year old son, normally a very willing hiker, developed such a pain in the gut that he could not proceed. Concerned that he might have a serious intestinal obstruction or appendicitis, we could not wait it out. I lifted the chunky kid and carried him down the mountain for at least 1/2 hour. Eventually he must have found the discomfort of being carried increasing to where it was comparable to his gut pain, which might have been easing. He allowed as how he could try to walk the rest of the way, and that it had been a mistake to eat the entire bag of m&ms!
5. If you could give one piece of advice to other outdoor families, what would it be? Learn to have confidence in each of your kids, and thus teach them self-confidence.
6. What is your favorite piece of gear for outdoor parenting? Karhu kid-size cross-country skis fit the budget and fit the kids when they were 5 to 7 years old. We had a couple of pairs and they were passed along from one child to the next. One child was so excited to have her own new skis that she went out in 5 degree weather and skied around the yard on her own for a half hour.