Frosty Pines founder Tom Molinelli holds up a native cutthroat trout for some hands-on experience during a class last fall. Molinelli started the Vallecito-based wilderness education program a year ago as a way to connect kids to nature./Courtesy photo

Wild children

Frosty Pines makes kids feel at home in the outdoors
by Jen Reeder

When Vallecito resident Tom Molinelli was 14 years old, he survived an entire winter in the Sierra Nevada – alone. So it’s fitting that years later he would co-found a wilderness education program for children locally, Frosty Pines, which celebrated its first anniversary this month.
“The core purpose of our program is to connect people with nature,” says Molinelli’s partner and co-founder, Marcie Morgan.

They do so in a variety of ways. Classes take place on private properties near Vallecito, Ignacio, Mancos and Cortez, depending on the topic of the day. There is a Wednesday class for home-schooled students, a Saturday class for students of all ages (though typically students are 7-14), and a “Lost in the Woods” program, in which students learn coping skills such as how to build shelters, gather food, start a fire and determine their direction without a compass.

“We made a fire from a cell phone battery, and still made a call on it afterward,” Molinelli says. “It was very successful.”

In addition to environmental concepts and wilderness skills, classes incorporate art and music. The group might hike to a waterfall, then paint it with watercolors. Students make their own field journals out of recycled materials like old leather coats and write in them during a reflection period each day.

“It’s the whole concept of an invisible school,” Morgan says. “We’re not confined within four walls; we are going to be open year-round in the wild. We’re teaching kids not only to not be afraid out there, but to feel comfortable and that this is your home. With that concept, automatically children open up – their imagination flourishes, their creativity flourishes, and they’re learning without really knowing that they’re learning.”

Because of this approach, student interest can dictate a day’s itinerary. A planned wildflower hike might morph into an etymology day if the kids ask questions about bugs they see. Once they’d planned a day of bird watching, but ended up building a kite out of cattails and oak leaves and flying it.
“We tied it into flying and aerodynamics – math,” Molinelli says. “We don’t necessarily sit there and say, ‘What’s five plus five?’ but we always incorporate math and science and all different things from school that they technically think they’re not having to do.”

Math came into play last winter when students built an igloo with the Pine River Community Learning Center.

“There’s a lot of math that goes into that – we had to explain angles and they were asking why it wasn’t caving in,” he says.

They also hosted an ice-sculpting contest for about 20 kids last winter at Vallecito Lake, supplying safety equipment, chisels and their own blocks of ice, some of them colorfully dyed.

“Parents actually loved it,” Morgan says. “They said, ‘I would never have let my kid use a chisel.’ But we had not one single injury.”

Safety – particularly with knives – is of paramount concern. In fact, after taking Frosty Pines classes, one student refused to take a knife his father was trying to pass him until he offered it in the safe, correct way he’d learned. It’s just one of myriad lessons taught at Frosty Pines.

“This is the big point: we do a million different things,” Molinelli says. “We could be fly fishing, we could be making primitive fire, we could be having a robot-building contest out of trash and recycled stuff around the house, planting trees, tracking, making survival snowshoes … digging for grubs and the value of nutrition … anything that we do, we bring it into either environmental education or wilderness education, survival skills, so really, you never know what you’re going to get.”

The couple brings a diverse background to the venture. Molinelli, a former professional musician who was profoundly influenced by an Outward Bound experience when he was 13, peppers his conversations with anecdotes from the backcountry, like how he has put out several forest fires by hand – once digging a fire line with one of those orange backcountry latrine shovels.

Morgan, who has a background in product marketing and fire fighting, is a mother of two boys and extensively studied the psychology of how children learn so that she could home-school them. When she and Molinelli conceived of Frosty Pines while living in San Luis Obispo, Calif., they took out a map of the U.S. to try to find the perfect home for it, and settled on Durango.

“We love teaching in this area,” Molinelli says. “It’s why we moved to Durango: the different ecosystems that are all within a car’s drive.”

They don’t regret the decision, and have found it rewarding to watch their students’ progress. They’ve had kids who didn’t want to sit on the ground on their first day of class for fear of getting ants or pine needles in their pants. One 8-year-old boy even told them he couldn’t relax without his video game, but by the end of the day’s hike as they took in a scenic view, he told them, “This is the most relaxed I think I’ve been in my life.”

Durango resident Kelly Sems says her 12-year-old son, Noah Spangler, has attended Frosty Pines workshops most Saturdays since taking an animal tracking class with them last fall and loves the outdoor experience.

“He’s blossomed. He has more confidence, and he’s more talkative. And he’s improved in school since we’ve been doing this – it’s awesome,” Sems says. “Marcie and Tom are really good mentors and role models.”

They have no intentions of slowing down. The couple’s research with the La Plata County Historical Society led to plans for a pioneer-themed day camp this summer, the Frosty Pines Frontier Village, which runs from June 4 - Aug. 10 near Vallecito. The campers will make and wear frontier clothes, and after a week of safety training, be given a map and told to try to find Frontier Village. There they’ll build a log cabin, trade wares they’ve made with members of the Southern Ute Boys and Girls Club, fill covered wagons with supplies, and hear from more than 50 special guests, among other activities. For example, Buffalo Barb, who was trampled by a buffalo, will teach them how to tan elk and deer hides, and Ed Scott will teach them to make bows and arrows.

“‘Little House on the Prairie’ stuff, it’s going to be amazing,” Molinelli says. “I can’t wait.”

In the meantime, enrollment for Frontier camp as well as the various Frosty Pines Wilderness Education programs is ongoing, and volunteers are welcome. They also offer private classes and hope to eventually expand to offer programs throughout the Four Corners.

“We’re open to forming good partnerships and good relationships,” Morgan said, “it really is an adventure.”

For more information visit www.frostypines.com.

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