Video: Inspiring a New Generation of Adventurers

ByMary Anne Potts
March 05, 2014
9 min read

Adventure educators Amy and Dave Freeman have built their lives around using technology to bring outdoor adventure into the classroom through their organization Wilderness Classroom. The Minnesotan couple, two of our Adventurers of the Year, just completed their three-year, nearly 12,000-mile North American Odyssey, which engaged more than 85,000 schoolkids. Here, learn more about their story and how they have followed their dream to inspire kids to get outside.

Adventure: Fellow Minnesotan Will Steger is a pioneer of using expeditions for education. Did he inspire what you and Amy are doing now?

Dave Freeman: Amy and I were not lucky enough to know about Will Steger when we were younger. However, he has inspired us in recent years. Will lives outside of Ely, Minnesota, where we live in the winter, and helped us when we were planning the dogsleding stage of the North American Odyssey. His commitment to climate change education and living in a sustainable way have really inspired us. We share a love for maps, wild spaces, and long challenging trips, so meeting with him at his homestead and pouring over maps was a real treat. Seeing the impact that he has had by educating people about the polar regions and connecting with classrooms over the last three decades inspires Amy and me to keep sharing our adventures with as many kids as we can.

A: What are the main tech devices you use to stay connected in the field?

DF: We are lucky because we get a fair amount of feedback from parents, teachers, and kids. Last week I got an email from a mother explaining that her teenage daughter has decided that she wants to become a conservationist and wilderness guide after a recent dogsled trip with me, and a teacher just told us a fun story about how her students favorite activity on the playground is pretending to be explorers “like Dave and Amy”. I think we are reaching young people on a variety of levels. I really hope that we are impacting kids in the way the Will impacted you. That’s certainly what motivates us. Having kids tell us that they made their parents take them canoeing after meeting us, or that they are going to kayak around Lake Superior when they get older gives us hope.

A: When you are not on an expedition, do you and Amy have pretty normal lives?

DF: The sled dogs are amazing animals. We work with about 70 Canadian Inuit Dogs at Wintergreen Dogsled Lodge. Wintergreen has the largest kennel of working Canadian Inuit Dogs in the world. They are the working dog of the High Arctic and some of them were even born in the Arctic. Paul Schurke, the owner, sometimes brings puppies back from Greenland and other places he visits during his expeditions. They love people, but they typically do not make good pets. They have so much energy and love to run and run and run, they are quite literally born to pull. My favorite is a dog named Bubba. Bubba is old now, but in his prime he pulled a 1,000 pounds in a weight pulling competition all by himself.

A: What’s next this year for you and Amy?

DF: We have two projects planned in 2014. This spring I am headed down to Brazil to canoe the Rio Roosevelt. President Theodore Roosevelt explored and mapped the river in 1914 during an epic adventure, which almost cost him his life. We have organized a team of experienced Brazilian and American paddlers and will spend about five weeks exploring the Rio Roosevelt and sharing our journey with classrooms through the 

Wilderness Classroom

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In the fall Amy and I are going to paddle to Washington DC from the Boundary Waters in Northern Minnesota, it will take us about 100 days. There are several new mines being proposed near the Boundary Waters that we are very worried will pollute the pristine lakes in rivers where we live and work as wilderness guides. We will paddle a canoe signed by thousands of people to DC to draw national attention to this important issue and ask the government to not allow sulfide mining in the Boundary Waters watershed.

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