Birch Creek Service Ranch & beatitudes for a new generation

After about 10 years of mostly responsible adulting, I can only begin to describe how good it has been this summer to check back in with Birch Creek Ranch.

The Ranch has no creed, but its philosophy is essentially summed up in this poem, written by Lowell Bennion in 1962:

“Learn to like what doesn't cost much.

Learn to like reading, conversation, music.

Learn to like plain food, plain service, plain cooking.

Learn to like fields, trees, brooks, hiking, rowing, climbing hills.

Learn to like people, even though some of them may be different, different from you.

Learn to like to work and enjoy the satisfaction doing your job as well as it can be done.

Learn to like the song of birds, the companionship of dogs.

Learn to like gardening, going around the house fixing things.

Learn to like the sunrise and sunset, the beating of rain on the roof and windows, and the gentle fall of snow on a winter day.

Learn to keep your wants simple and refuse to be controlled by the likes and dislikes of others.”

Simplicity and contemplation; hard work and creativity; personal growth and community awareness; resourcefulness and independent thought; and an appreciation for life, nature, and difference. This is the basis on which Dr. Bennion ran his summer ranch in Tenon Valley, Idaho for over 40 years. And it has continued as a kind of beatific ethos for Birch Creek for the past 15 years. That is, from the days when it was a few yurts, a couple porta-potties, an outdoor kitchen with a French drain, and an old, heavy, hot-as-hell canvas army tent in the cheat grass of Pigeon Hollow, to now, running things out of a straw-bale lodge, properly wired and plumbed, a fine “chapel in the junipers,” and even reliable (and mostly air-conditioned!) vehicles.

Here’s some of that that looked like this summer.

A descent into Dark Canyon starts with a quick sermon on cryptobiotic crust. (“Like desert coral reefs,” one of the boys says. OK, looks like we get it; let’s go!) Over the next few hours we will see what rubbish snacks some of them chose to buy at the gas station by the colors and consistency of their barf in the sand: Corn Nuts, Frito Lay, neon red Slurpee, and so on. Embodied learning.

Sunrise on the dirtmonsters.

On the loooong walk back up the “Devil’s Stairway,” I admire and comment on one boy’s daypack, how it’s probably older than he is. He explains that it is the pack his father took when he came to his home country to adopt him. And that his father had now lent it to him for the summer. We talk and he goes on to tell me about how he ended up losing some of his best friends on the last day of school before heading off into the summer. Some misunderstanding and teen drama at Lagoon Day. Middle school is hard, but life tends to only get better from there; we talk for a while about that.

Some of the boys talk about all the world travels their wealthy families have taken them on. Others from more modest circumstances have never really left their home state. One of the other boys has two seemingly permanent boogers oozing from both of his nostrils day after day of the trip, like a sort of Garbage Pail Kid. His mouth breathing is loud and labored the whole way up the climb. But he sets his own steady if slow pace and makes it all the way.

When people sometimes ask whether we’re working with “at risk youth,” the response is usually something like: “Are there any teenagers in 21^st century America who aren’t at risk for so much?”

View of the Tetons from Bennion Teton Ranch.

Nebo from Birch Creek.