For 49 years, Ridgefield 5th graders have been attending Cispus Outdoor School. The kids get on a bus and ride to Cispus Outdoor Learning Center in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest. For a week, kids get to experience the outdoors while having classes, hiking, learning survival skills, and sitting around a large campfire.
One family has been an important legacy for almost all of the 49 years. John Hudson, principal at Union Ridge Elementary, started Cispus for Ridgefield. Carla Bonebrake, the health aid at Union Ridge, was a part of the first fifth-grade class to attend Cispus and has attended as support staff for the past 11 years. Bonebrake’s mom, Allene Wodaege, worked with Hudson to manage Cispus and spent 25 years leading the camp for Ridgefield School District. She taught classes, implemented training for counselors and later managed the program.
“We would sleep out in the fields, under the stars! You know the feeling of being up there is exactly the same. Very little has changed. The cabin I stayed in, Dogwood, is still there, still the same,” said Bonebrake.
Wodaege is most proud of “what it instills in the children and the counselors. Not only knowledge but their exposure to the outdoors, what it holds and what it can do for all of them, touching nature and being part of it. It is a transformative experience that has impacted generations of students,” said Wodaege.
Bonebrake and Wodaege are happy to see the tradition they started continuing today.
