Taking time to learn about your own community

Bison Days returns next week, which offers all McCook High School students two days to experience new hobbies, professions, and skills.

From the freshmen to the seniors, the students will be venturing out to local businesses to learn everything from baking donuts and cooking pasta to earning a boating license and mastering pickle ball - if pickle ball can ever really be mastered.

Bison Days was developed several years ago after seeing the program in Cozad. And the Bison Days has turned into a wonderful annual event, which brings students out of the classroom and into the community. McCook Community Foundation Fund has chosen to grant toward the Bison Days every year since its inception because it is truly a unique program and brings young people and adults together in a fun, enriching setting.

Students get to see businesses up close and personal. They get to experience the area’s natural assets by fishing. They learn hobbies that they never knew or existed or that they could even do here.

On the flip side, business owners and other adult volunteers get to interact with students, which might not normally happen.

After the first year of Bison Days, every one called it a success. Such a success in fact that many adults clamored to have a similar program, where they got to learn more about their community, to learn more about local businesses, to learn more about local opportunities.

While there isn’t an Adult Bison Days just yet, there are plenty of other opportunities to learn about what is available in your community or about the history of your hometown.

Maybe it’s visiting a local museum. The High Plains Historical Museum is now open regular hours every day of the week. There have been many changes inside over the past year with many more planned in the near future. They are doing great things to share McCook’s history, so we can learn where we’ve been as we figure out where we are going.

Buffalo Commons Storytelling and Music Festival traditionally includes a bus-tour with an interesting topic every year. This year the “bus tour” will be a walking tour around downtown McCook to learn about the different artistic endeavors which have developed recently.

McCook’s 7th graders get to do a Heritage Walking Tour in the spring when it doesn’t snow, rain or get cancelled from Covid, which has happened the past three years. But when it does happen, these kids get to learn what made McCook grow, what made McCook what it is, who made McCook what it is today. They visit the Norris House, Nelson’s boyhood home, the 100-year-old Keystone, MNB Bank, the museum and probably their favorite stop, Sehnert’s Bakery. The other locations may be historically enriching but they can’t compete with a fresh doughnut.

There is McCook’s Heritage Square Walking Tour, which highlights all the downtown historical locations. Brochures are available at the museum and the Keystone so you have a description to pursue along the walk.

With new technology, plans are also underway to add video and audio recordings for each location, adding to the information available such interior tours when a site is closed or background on historical figures.

And if nothing else, go out for a walk. But not just a stroll around the block but rather with an intentionality to really observe your surroundings. Studies have shown that people walk their neighborhoods with the purpose of learning are better connected to their community. These people know where the cracks are in the sidewalks. They know where businesses are located along the route. They know if their parks and playgrounds are being used.

They want to know more about their community and use walking as a chance to observe and learn what already exists in their hometown, what needs fixed or what is already in place.

If you really want to get to know your community, grab your spouse or grab a friend and go for a walk.

And with all these nice days we have been experiencing lately, you don’t have weather as an excuse to not venture outside.

***

On a side note, you can thank me or curse me for this unseasonably nice weather we have experienced this winter. I personally like cross-country skiing, so I have been wishing for snow, which obviously we have not received lately.

But there was guilt when I went cross-country skiing earlier this season during our lone significant snow but can’t take my husband with me for lack of size 14 ski boots and skis.

So for his 50th birthday last month, I invested in a set of cross-country skis and boots for him. They are still gathering dust in our garage with nary a flake of snow to be found. So “you’re welcome” to all those warm-weather lovers.