Gosh it’s a difficult time of year, when the desire to frolic outdoors in the late fall/early winter chill is tempered by the mountains of papers to grade, endless meetings to be held, and the lurking danger of syllabi for next semester. It’s the time of year, when you have every intention of taking dog and kid for a walk after work, but that by the time you reach daycare, it is pitch black, and even though you haven’t gotten there any later than you did a few months ago, you feel terrible about leaving your kid in the care of strangers so late into the night.

Minnow and I have been trying to find ways to counter these daylight confines by squeezing in fun adventures on weekends (trips to living history farms, nature centers, and local playgrounds) and by using our long winter evenings to read about the adventures and misadventures of other outdoor enthusiasts. With that as an intro, I present the current favorite book in the Science household, Stan and Jan Berenstain’s The Bear Scouts.

(Isn’t it amazing how Minnow is picking up on the rhyming and able to supply her own words to end some of the lines of text? In another take she did far more of it than displayed here.)

After we’re done reading about the Bear Scouts’ adventures, we can retreat to the cozy four-season tent…

pitched inside my home office. Do you think my students will believe me if I tell them their papers aren’t graded because I’ve been camping every night this week? (As I write this, Princess Pup has made herself comfortable in the tent, as she patiently waits for me to finish and play with her.)

To all the students and faculty out there, good luck with the end of the semester crazies and may you find time to escape to nature when it is all over.