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Show Boys and girls from the Chicago area were brought for a week's stay to a Park Service site on Lake Geneva, vihere Janey and other rangers took them star gazing at night. In the daytime, they might tour a city park, vihere Janey would blindfold the sixth graders, take them by the hand and lead them through trees. "Concentrate on all your other senses," she'd tell them. "What do you hear - a bird singing? Can you smell the pines? How does the earth feel beneath your feet?" The children's hands would tighten viith excitement as they focused on a living, groviing terrain. "If you're used to thinking about the outside," Janey says, "about what effect the vieather is having, about environment in general, it's a surprise to learn that many kids never think at all about their surroundings. We viere trying to create an environment, even if it vias mostly of concrete and asphalt, for children who had never noticed environment before. In a vieek we couldn't change their point of view too much, but vie helped a little. I learned a lot from them, too, maybe more than they learned from me." That was the summer of 1973* After the Chicago experience, Janey's classmates viere split up and sent to six different cities to receive further urban training while they waited for permanent assignments. The wait stretched to five months. In Washington, D. C , Janey and nine others performed a number of Park Service jobs, anxious to be sent to a field area vihere they could "really do ranger work," in Janey's case, the protective work that she had chosen but had not yet had a chance to practice» |