Just teens being green

Campaign urges trading ‘Web site for a campsite’

Friday, June 27, 2008

Click here to enlarge this photo Submitted photo Amber, top left, and Meladeh Rabie and Marie, bottom left, and Jasmine Ammar are featured in the June edition of Ranger Rick magazine. Last summer the girls participated in the Great American Backyard Campout. E-Mail This Article | Print This Story

Sisters Meladeh and Amber Rabie and their friends, sisters Jasmine and Marie Ammar are featured in the current edition of Ranger Rick magazine after participating in last year’s Great American Backyard Campout.

A campaign by the National Wildlife Federation, the campout encourages young people and parents to ‘‘trade their Web site for a campsite.”

Becky Ammar (the mother of Jasmine, 12, and Marie, 10) came across the NWF’s Web site last year when the Great American Backyard Campout was taking registrations. After signing up the girls, she got a call from the Virginia-headquarters of Ranger Rick magazine, the NWF’s publication aimed at readers 7 and older.

Would the girls be OK with a Ranger Rick photographer bunking with them at their campsite in the Ammar’s backyard, which just so happened to be situated along the photogenic shore of the Ammar’s home on the Potomac River in Marshall Hall?

The girls were fine with it, until Marie realized the photographer wasn’t content on taking just a couple of snaps.

‘‘She wouldn’t let us go to sleep,” groaned the T.C. Martin Elementary School student, who has since moved to La Plata along with her mother and sister. ‘‘We kept hearing, ‘click, click.’”

Joined by friend, Mitchell Rye, 15 (who slept on the ‘‘boys only” side of the enormous tent), the girls spent a weekend last June beachcombing for treasures, telling ghost stories, roasting marshmallows, hunting for bugs, playing badminton, going on a scavenger hunt, riding a tire swing, playing with the Ammar family’s dogs and making something called ‘‘moth paste” to attract the winged creatures to the campsite.

‘‘It was so sticky,” Marie said of the concoction that called for a blend of fruits and other sweet-tasting stuff, slathered on a tree, which didn’t do much moth attracting. ‘‘I don’t think the tree liked it.”

Other than telling Mitchell to shut down the ‘‘annoying” music coming from his cell phone, the kids found other ways to pass the time.

Jasmine tried a recipe found in an edition of Ranger Rick that called for roasted pineapple drizzled with honey.

Marie found a heart-shaped rock and looked for items on the scavenger hunt list.

Amber, 13, collected vines and what started out as a project to stave off boredom grew to be an original basket that she later entered in the county fair, winning a ribbon.

Ghost stories were told and tales grew sillier as the campers grew more tired. Angel the dog stayed with them — a fluffy white, pink-nosed guardian.

The five campers were among the more than 42,000 nationwide who participated in the 2007 campout, according to the National Wildlife Federation.

The organization maintains campers don’t have to venture to Yosemite or Yellowstone to enjoy nature; they simply have to go into backyards and take in the view.

An NWF Web site makes it easier to plan an excursion by packing its site full of lists on what to pack, campsite recipes, nocturnal wildlife and nature guides, and exploration activities.

Due to scheduling conflicts, the girls are not participating in this year’s event June 28, but they do figure on setting up a make-up date.

They are currently juggling vacations with 4-H camp and other must-do summer activities.

Maybe they aren’t hardcore campers who rough it every weekend, but it wasn’t too hard for the Rabie and Ammar girls to forego computers and TV for a day or two in the wild.

They might be more environmentally conscious then some of their friends which is something Meladeh, 17, chalks up to the influence of her mother, Sharon.

Indian Head resident Sharon Rabie is a naturalist at Hard Bargain Farm and has enlisted the kids’ help in the Potomac River watershed cleanup and other environment-friendly projects.

The four girls, who met through a mutual friend at a barbecue, are involved in 4-H’s dog club together and have an easy rapport, even though the oldest is 17 and the youngest is 10.

Given Ranger Rick’s readership which is usually elementary and middle school readers, Meladeh was a bit surprised when friends at Henry E. Lackey High School came up to her telling her that they saw her in the magazine.

‘‘I still read it,” said Meladeh, who, although she wouldn’t give up hot showers, would rather be doing something outside than be cooped up indoors

‘‘It’s good for kids to get away from that,” Sharon Rabie said of indoor activities like vegging out in front of the television. ‘‘There is a real disconnect kids have [from nature].”

As a naturalist on the Accokeek farm, Rabie sees kids come to the farm for field trips who are scared of the outdoors.

‘‘Many children who get off the bus are terrified ... what they see on TV, they think they’re going to be attacked by a wild animal. I don’t want my children to think that. They are not only connected to nature, they are a part of nature.”

That love extends to the girls’ future plans.

Meladeh wants to be a marine biologist while Amber is thinking about becoming a teacher. Jasmine is interested in studying environmental law, and right now, Marie is thinking she’d like to be a park ranger.