By Nick Simonson

I was more the memorize-and-identify type when it came to Science Olympiad in high school.  A love of the outdoors and especially frogs, turtles and salamanders from an early age and knowing exactly where they were in my field guide and on the continent made me a two-time state champion when it came to the Reptiles and Amphibians event.  My friends, more coding-inclined in those early days of computers, and others who excelled in orienteering from their days as Eagle Scouts covered those niches of the wide-ranging arena that comprised the state tournament each year. We even recruited the smartest guy on the track team so he could run and catch the record-setting rocket that brought home the gold medal in the distance launch competition and help send us to nationals all four years I was in high school.

After a five-year hiatus, the Science Olympiad program has restarted in my home state, and honestly it couldn’t have come a moment sooner.  That’s not just because every kid with a niche love of crawly creatures, or who gets revved up by rocket launching, or has a dream of building an almost perpetual motion machine deserves a place to pursue those passions, but it also reminds us that beyond the glowing screens, the voice directions from Siri, and myriad other advances we’ve made since I earned a spot on the team one autumn 30 years ago, there are lost skills to be remastered which transfer into the outdoors and life in general.

Obviously, orienteering – the ability to read a map, trace lines of topography, navigate distance and time in the wild and make yourself found when you are lost using only a compass – is a big advantage to any hunter who ventures away from home, both far and near.  Sure, your phone can tell you where you are, but batteries run dead, cell signal withers beyond the rocky rise, and at some point, we’re all left with the moss on the trees, the sun in the sky, and the angle of the terrain to guide us.  The lost skill of reading a paper map, utilizing a magnetic red needle and a circle of numbers is one any hunter or outdoors person should have to fall back on.

The simple knowledge of what’s around us is a lost skill going beyond clicking the camera lens on a phone to pick out a leaf and run it against an online database to find the plant it belongs to which is a shortcut to success.  A recent survey by a British conservation group found that children ages 4-to-11 were inclined to identify more of the 100 types of Pokémon presented to them than the 100 common species of wildlife set out on similar cards the group created, which included otters, herons, and wrens.  While admittedly, the animals in the wild don’t go around shouting their names at passersby like the fictional Pokémon do, it is a cause for concern showing the gap of disconnect with the natural world growing with each generation.  It doesn’t take much more than a walk in the wild, a hunt with mom or dad, and perhaps the gift of a field guide to identify and check off birds, trees, fish, and mammals and build up this crucial skill and create a stronger connection with the wild world.

While I wasn’t great at it as a last-second add, in my final year of Science Olympiad I filled a gap in a event which traced stream flow, ran tests for pH, and otherwise immersed me into the world of water quality.  In my later years, this would all come together in my boat.  I began tracking output at area dams, using Secchi readings to determine lure choice, and taking turbidity and water quality into consideration for my fishing efforts.  Being able to know how high the river would be by the discharge from the dam upstream, the temperature shift based on the season or the heat of the day on those 11 miles, and what rocks would be covered, and which ones would provide current breaks made my efforts more successful.  Knowing how to read a river, what creatures live in it due to its cleanliness, or where they are at given times due to changing rate of flow, all sprung from this chance involvement in the event and fueled a love of fishing in the entire picture and protecting that opportunity for the next angler. Reading the water remains one of the most important skills I’ve retained.

The return of Science Olympiad may not restore all our lost skills or be the right path for everyone, but it provides an avenue among many routes to learn them for those who wish to pick up these abilities and apply them as a base beneath new options like GPS, real-time sonar, and step-by-step voice directions to the nearest access point on a favorite frozen lake.  The lean toward technology when required is part-and-parcel with our modern society, but these lost skills and others will always make for a more complete and successful experience…in our outdoors.

Simonson is the lead writer and editor of Dakota Edge Outdoors.

Featured Photo: Yes. But What Kind of Frog?  Identifying flora and fauna in the wild is a disappearing skill, along with using a compass and map, studying stream biology, and other vital repositories of knowledge that help make hunting and fishing better. (It’s a northern leopard frog.) Simonson Photo.