Action Academy field trip, long overdue: Although we've now been living in Colorado for one year after a very urban existence in Washington, DC, we haven't had nearly as many outdoor adventures here as I'd intended. Thankfully my eco-warrior environmental-crusading friends – the ones who shared their copy of Last Child In The Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature Deficit-Disorder with me to help make sure their own superhero son wouldn't be the last child in the woods – invited us down for a weekend at the small cabin they own in Westcliff, CO, about three hours south of Denver.

Just a quick weekend adventure, but on the drive down my daughter Dangerg!rl – undercover as W!lderness Woman for the weekend – spotted a hawk, two bighorn sheep, and about a dozen deer (including one big buck with a handsome set of antlers), getting increasingly excited about each new sighting. Once we got there we picked and devoured wild raspberries growing at the edge of a beaver pond, and the next day the kids each caught and released small brook trout from the same pond, using a small kiddie fishing pole. 

The best teachable moment of the weekend came in the middle of a short hike, when my daughter said she was bored. I actually think she meant to say she was hot and tired and needed a nap, all true. But something about "bored" rubbed me wrong. Where does a child learn such an obscenity? Certainly not at Action Academy. I got all superhero dad on her, and told her that "bored" is a very bad word that I didn't ever want to hear my children using. Where do I even come up with this stuff? Sometimes in the middle of parenting, I surprise myself.

There's no excuse for a kid being bored on a trail through the woods, with rabbits and squirrels and chipmunks dashing all about and wildflowers in bloom all over the place, and there's no excuse for being the kind of dad whose city kids get bored when they get out in the wilderness. Thankfully, salvation was right around the corner: Inspired by the beaver that created the pond full of brook trout and surrounded by wild raspberries, the three kids began hauling fallen Aspen logs to build a big stick fort at the edge of a meadow.

I started snapping pictures like a madman, and that too became cause for inspiration. I winced a little bit as first my 5 and a half year-old son, and then my 4 year-old daughter, and then their 2 and a half year-old friend took turns running around firing away with my $1,000+ digital SLR to document everything nature was throwing at them, but what the heck: Their pictures were fantastic and they'd left all trace of boredom long behind. Mission accomplished. We're going back in a few weeks when all those Aspen trees start spinning gold.

We've got to get out more! (And by we, I mean all of us).

 – Colin Bane