Nurture IN NATURE

Does raising an outdoor kid prepare him for the real world?

- TRACY ROSS

EIGHTEEN-YEAR-OLD SCOUT and I are lying in our tent with the cold moon glaring through. I am trying to sleep despite teeth-clenching shivers; Scout is out. His eyes track a dream beneath his lids. Predictable. He is positivity personified. No care or discomfort has ever kept my son from easy sleep.

We shouldn’t be this chilled. Sure, it’s late fall in Death Valley, but we checked the forecast before leaving our home in Colorado. It called for daily highs in the 60s and nightly lows in the 40s. We threw our summer-weight bags and lightweight clothing, visors, and sunscreen into duffels and hopped cheap flights to my parents’ home in Las Vegas, where we borrowed my mom’s SUV and hit the highway to Death Valley for one last mother-son trip before Scout leaves for college.

The drive was windows down, The Black Keys pumping, lemonades on gas station ice, and cotton T-shirts fluttering in the wind. But as we descended into Badwater Basin—282 feet below sea level—a haze cloaked the sun, the temperature dropped, and we closed the windows. By the time we rolled past The Inn at Furnace Creek, I was reaching into the back seat for a flannel. Then, just after 4:30 p.m., the sun dropped beneath the Panamint Range, dusk spread across the basin, and it grew cold enough for thick wool socks and mittens. Hastily, we pitched our floorless tent, threw down our uninsulated sleeping pads, and unfurled our 30°F bags in the sub-freezing desert night.