San Diego ICO
“The kids ask me ‘Why do you do this?’” says Willard Tayler (above), 78 years old and an Inspiring Connections Outdoors (ICO) volunteer since 2009. “I tell them, ‘Because I like being with people my own age!’”
Willard and his son Bill (below) hiked and camped together long before they started volunteering with ICO. Bill grew up in rural Michigan, enjoying a direct connection to the outdoors from a young age and spending his childhood catching frogs in a local creek and exploring in the woods. In 2008, after moving to California, Bill heard about ICO while wrapping gifts at an REI fundraiser. He began volunteering, and is now a co-chair of the San Diego ICO. He believes that ICO helps kids develop “appreciation, love, and respect for nature,” and that it gives them an opportunity to “enjoy what is everybody’s birthright.”
Willard, on the other hand, needed a little nudge to join ICO. “It’s my son’s fault,” he confesses. After retiring to California, Willard and Bill often would camp and hike together, but that stopped as Bill became more involved in ICO. So Willard joined ICO as well, to participate alongside his son. He estimates that the two of them have been on around 150 trips together, leading children with little connection to the outdoors into the mountains and deserts near San Diego. “It keeps you young,” he says. “It helps you to help them.”
For Willard, volunteering at ICO is almost “like a mission. It’s something you do to help other people.”
“It’s a labor of love,” agrees Bill.
Both Willard and Bill are continually impressed by the children they work with. The groups are culturally and ethnically diverse, and mostly from an urban background, but in Willard’s words, “When you get these kids out here, their background doesn’t matter. They’re just kids.”
Many of the kids who go on ICO trips had very little exposure to the outdoors before they started participating. Some of the participants in the San Diego ICO program had never seen snow, or the desert less than an hour away, or even swum in the ocean that laps at the city’s feet. “The outdoors helps because it exposes them to something different,” says Willard. “It shows them that the world is bigger than what they’ve seen. And at the end of a hike when a kid says to you, ‘This is the best day of my life,’ that’s really something.”
Recalling a hike where one boy hurt his ankle, only to say, “Well, it hurts, but it’s still better than sitting at home doing nothing,” Bill says that one of ICO’s biggest roles is “expanding their boundaries, expanding what they can do.” Many of the participants start out scared of animals, nature, and heights, but “The challenge is part of what I’m giving them. The accomplishment.” So the kids try rock climbing, always a favorite, or touch a lizard or snake, and the barriers and fear break down.
Willard agrees, remembering pep talk he gave to a girl who persevered on a hike, despite finding the steep slope a challenge. “I told her, ‘Life is like that. There’s going to be things in your way that make it hard for you, but if you persevere you can achieve your goals.’ That’s one of the things ICO does. It tells you that if you keep on going, and trying, you can get where you want to get.”
Volunteering at ICO “isn’t challenging,” says Willard. As a volunteer, “you see nature in a different way, from a different perspective, even if you’re an experienced hiker.”
“It doesn’t get old,” agrees Bill, who says that you can take three hikes “on the same mountain, in the same season, with three sets of kids, and you have three different hikes. It’s always a different experience.”
ICO can always use more volunteers, and Bill notes, “If you think you have an interest, try it once and see if you like it. It’s being a mentor to kids, not just hiking. That’s what makes it special.”
As Willard says, the future of ICO is “up to the people in the area of the ICO group. It’s up to us to determine what the future is going to be. I’m the past, but these kids are the future.”
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