Jan 1, 2006 12:00 PM, By Betsy Spethmann

It's good to get out into the woods once in a while, to leave the commercial universe and forget material goods and consumerism and live life the old-fashioned way.

Last month I spent three days with my son's fifth grade class as they tromped, skidded and climbed through the outdoor curriculum of an environmental learning center in southern Minnesota. The classes had names like Pioneer Life and Winter Survival. Each class was three hours long, mostly outside.

It was 8 below the first two days, 3 below on the third. No wind to speak of, which was lucky, and mostly sunny, which is good for the spirit but does squat for the temperature.

There was a special poignancy to the Oneota Village class. The Oneota were a prehistoric tribe that lived throughout the Midwest without the luxury of Wal-Mart, Home Depot or written language. They used a deer scapula as a shovel and an oyster shell to scrape hides; they sewed animal skins together with shreds of frayed sinew. I was impressed by Oneota resourcefulness, and started wondering how long us city slickers would have to be in the woods before our perspective shifted and we started to see the trees and rocks as tools, before the middle of nowhere felt like the middle of Ace Hardware.

The fifth graders bundled up and trudged about a half-mile through the snow to a makeshift Oneota village to grind corn, start fires and make raspberry tea. There's a log canoe in progress — kids who come in the spring and fall get to work on it, burning down and scraping out the center of the log. There's a hut of deerskins stretched over sapling poles. Some kids got into the experience, sawing maniacally on their bowsticks to create the tiny spark that might catch a smidgen of tinder on fire. Others stood around and whined about being cold, refusing to stamp their feet or jump around to get their blood moving.

It was the same with their Winter Survival class the next day. The kids got 20 minutes in the classroom going over the seven essentials for surviving: positive mental attitude, the will to live, oxygen, warmth and shelter, water, rest and food. Then they trekked outside for two and a half hours of building shelter, starting fires and brewing hot lemonade. It was sunny, and they broke a sweat rigging plastic tarps over fallen trees, collecting tiny sticks and a few oak leaves for their fire pans. It was beautiful in the woods, but that positive mental attitude and will to live were spotty. Some of the kids were suffering from a low-grade vibe of futility and defeat.

Finally, I saw the irony of it. The kids who were enjoying this prehistoric role-playing and hardscrabble survival stuff were the ones who were dressed right — three layers (one for wicking, one for warmth, one for protection), warm socks, insulated boots. The kids who hated it had the wrong socks, cotton sweatshirts, knit gloves, baseball jackets that weren't even snapped up. These kids simply had less. Their demographic was a closer match to the Oneota, but they had a tougher time bridging the cultural gap.

One girl had a Magic Scarf — those glittery frou-frou things loosely knit from eyelash yarn, popular last year with middle-aged housewives and fourth graders. I don't know if she thought the “Magic” part would keep her warm, but I lent her a fleece scarf, and she ended up wearing both. Still, her feet were cold, and all she wanted to do was go inside.

So in the end, the lesson was that you can get by with very little — as long as you start out with the right gear in the first place. And no matter how far we venture into the woods, we are still consumers, and not all consumers are created equal. Our pleasure is always fundamentally linked to our purchases. If you want to enjoy nature at its most basic — with all the modern comforts stripped away, so it's just you and the trees and the snow — invest in the high-end polypropelene.

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