Earlham Echo

Beloved educator Chris Adkins retires from Dallas County Conservation

February 27, 2024

Everyone has a different definition of ‘retirement age.’ Well into his 60s and living and loving his work, Chris Adkins wasn’t giving it much thought. But then two of his lifelong friends passed away within two years.

“I realized, I am mortal,” said the long-time Environmental Education Program Coordinator for Dallas County Conservation. “I do not have forever to do everything. As long as I was doing this job at the level I was doing it, all those things weren’t going to get done. By mid-September in the Boundary Waters, the mosquitoes are gone and nobody is there. We want to spend more time with (daughters) Kate and Kal. We’ve always wanted to go to Maine. There are rivers I’d like to float. And it just wasn’t going to happen.”

Adkins last day on the job was January 31, so for he and his wife Jerri, anything they want to do can happen now. Of all the loose plans they have made, moving to a retirement community in Florida or Arizona isn’t among them.

“I know every tree, and where all the flowers are,” said Adkins. “I know where the sun rises and sets. I just can’t imagine not calling Iowa home base. But I can imagine getting a pickup and custom mounting a topper on it and doing a lot of traveling.”

Adkins may be the easiest interview any journalist ever had. With hardly any urging, he can tell stories for days. His gift for oratory is one of the things that has made him such an endearing figure over the course of his career. His ability to immediately connect with people, especially kids, is another.

“Kids are very perceptive,” he said. “If they think you’re just mailing it in, they think, ‘This is bullshxt. This guy really doesn’t care about that.’  But when they see that it’s real—I’ve had kids come up and say, ‘Wow this isn’t just school for you, is it? This is kind of what you’re all about.’ The reason that students listen to me is that they quickly realize, this guy sees me and likes me and, also, this is real to him. This isn’t a job, this is in this guy’s DNA. It’s contagious. That genuine love of what you’re teaching is important.”

Adkins has studied other deep thinkers on the topic of education and applied that knowledge in his work. From a Nishnawbe Elder: “The first thing you need to do is teach these kids you love them. If they know that, everything else you try to do will work.” From Aldo Leopold: “It’s not so important that you have huge acumen of science, it’s that you are passionate about this and it is contagious.” From Rachel Carson: “It’s not nearly so important to know as it is to feel. We’re not here just trying to talk to your head, we’re here trying to talk to your spirit, your heart.”

Dallas County Conservation has long been on the cutting edge of environmental, ecological, and science education. Adkins was originally hired as a naturalist at DCC in 1997. He eventually moved into his current role, and for nearly three decades, his programs and workshops have been the stuff of legend. Multiple generations of Earlham kids—and adults—have experienced his unique brand of outdoor education.

“I remember an epiphany I had early on,” said Adkins. “I was working with (former DCC Director) Larry (Gullett) and starting to do a lot more teaching at Kuehn in experiential outdoor learning. I was looking at the word ‘educate.’ The Latin word when you break it down it means ‘to lead.’ Which makes a lot of sense. Teachers lead. But it also means, ‘lead out.’ So, I’m sure that was meant to be more metaphorical, to ‘lead out’ beyond the boundaries of your current thinking. But to me, I’m literal. When it said ‘out,’ it meant ‘outside.’ In my experience working here, I’ve seen how much better students learn when they’re not sitting in a row under fluorescent light. That may be a great place for mathematics and literature, but to understand science, you need to be immersed in it.”

People that spend too much time thinking about the past or looking too far ahead can miss out on what is going on in their lives in the present. But retirement is the perfect chance for someone to plan for a future that is free from the reins of a full-time job, and to reflect on accomplishments and embrace fond memories. Adkins has been doing a lot of both recently.

“You look back and you try to and figure out how did all this happen?” he said. “Where did all these strings get connected and this fabric get woven into what my life has been for these past 27 years?”

Adkins’ fabric started to come together growing up in Dexter in the 60s and 70s. He has fond memories of his school days, and, although he didn’t know it at the time, several of his teachers were an influence on his eventual career choice.

“I was the third of the three Adkins boys,” he said, “and I can remember going into 2^nd grade and Mrs. Forsyth said, ‘Oh no! Not another one of you!’ Those teachers that impacted me, that I really learned the most from, I realized—for whatever reason—they found something of value in me and liked me and I knew it. Whatever they were teaching, they lived that lesson and they tried to teach that.”

As a junior in 1973, Adkins was a star running back on the undefeated state champion Dexfield Blue Devils football team. The team was undefeated again in his senior season, but because of the qualifier system that was in place at the time, Dexfield didn’t even make the playoffs that season. (The rules were changed after that!)

For Adkins, life lessons learned on the gridiron were just as important as those from the classroom.

“That team is a testament to—it isn’t all about winning and losing. It was about all those friendships you formed,” he said. “Now, 50 years later, you’re still friends with these guys and you stayed together. Those bonds that were born there, you don’t get those anywhere else. It’s about being a teammate, and what that teaches you is just phenomenal.”

After graduation, Adkins’ career aspirations were almost nil. He only knew he wanted to keep playing football.

“People would ask me what I was going to do,” he said, “and just to jerk their chain, I would say, ‘I’m going to be an FBI agent.’ I had no intention of doing that.”

Adkins went to Drake University to play football. He also took a biology class that he liked. When he mentioned the class to his mother, she gave him some subtle encouragement.

“I went home and was sitting talking to my mom and she said, ‘Come here and look at this,’” he said. “She started thumbing through the family albums of the previous 18 years of my life. Almost every picture of me, I was holding a turtle or a snake, or I was axx deep in a mud puddle, or sitting in a canoe. And she said, ‘Yeah, I think maybe you didn’t know it, but this is who you’ve been all the time.”

Adkins transferred to Central College the next year. He still played football, but was more attracted to the strong biology department. As a generally positive, happy college kid, Adkins did have a cynical world view from a social, political—and especially environmental—perspective.

“I was trying to learn ecology because I was kind of doom and gloom,” he said. “The more I knew about human relationships with the natural world, I thought, ‘Well, I’m going to get a degree in environmental science so I understand how this works. Then I’m going to move somewhere and modern- day homestead and get off the grid. I’m going to give up on this place and go make my last stand somewhere in Montana.’”

Adkins was still a good football player, but his other interests were starting to take precedence. His coaches and teammates were not surprised when Adkins would take his helmet off during practice occasionally, point to some circling monarch butterflies, and explain their migration patterns to the group.

“I was always pontificating more about ecological issues and human relationships than I was football,” said Adkins.

One of the people who witnessed Adkins’ occasional orations was a coach, who was also a reverend, who became a good friend. One day that coach changed Adkins’ life in a profound way.

“My senior year, he came to me and said, ‘I don’t get you Chris. I know you’re graduating, and from what you’ve told me you want to do, I’ve never seen you as a quitter.’ I asked him what he meant, and he said, ‘You always show up, you always play, and now you’re quitting. You’re giving up on this place that you say you love and you’re just going to walk away from it. You’re a quitter.’ And man, that knocked me to the core.”

Adkins gave that some thought—then went back and had another discussion with the coach.

“I said, ‘Okay, you scared me here. What can I do different? And he said, ‘How do you fix it? How are you going to change things?’ My answer was, ‘Well, I think the most effective way to change it is to be a teacher and try to teach others the things that I know and love.’ So I went back and took a bunch of education courses and said, ‘I’m going to be a teacher.’”

Because of prescient guidance from a trusted mentor, Adkins studied to become a teacher. Just like he had lived the rest of his life up to that point, he approached his new career objectives on his terms.

“I did really well academically, but it wasn’t because I loved the system. I was usually in trouble,” he said. “But I was blessed with enough connected neurons that I did really well. But when I got into education, when I was taking my educational courses, I looked for every revolutionary idea I could find. I don’t think one shoe fits all and we don’t all fit in a straight line.”

Adkins got a job teaching science with Earlham Schools in 1985. The timing of his arrival was good. In 1986, the Dallas County Conservation Board was in the formative stages of building a progressive, forward-moving department. Larry Gullett was the naturalist at that time, and in 1986, he sent a letter to all the high school science teachers in the area inviting them to talk about how DCCB could help them supplement their curricula by participating in field days.

“I had to never been to Kuehn before,” said Adkins, “and when I drove out there, Larry and I were the only ones in the room. We sat and talked. He and I were so close together on education philosophy and experience of learning. I remember driving away that day thinking, ‘I’m going to work for these guys someday.’”

Early in Adkins’ career with Earlham Schools, there was some grant money available for an environmental learning facility. He worked with an architect in planning to build something at the current location of the soccer fields. DCCB had a better idea.

“We were going to submit the plan,” said Adkins, “and we sat down with Gullett and Dallas County and they said, ‘That’s great. There’s a lot of this going on around the state. But most of them don’t have 800 acres four miles away. Why build a facsimile of nature when you can bring them out here?’”

That’s when the relationship between Earlham Schools and DCCB expanded. For the next 10 years, Earlham served as sort of a guinea pig in helping build the environmental education program for Dallas County that would grow into what was cherished by students, teachers, and parents alike. But early on, the field days that every Earlham school kid has enjoyed over the years were a little different.

“When Kuehn was first acquired, it was like much of the landscape every farmer had—with a ravine,” said Adkins. “Kids helped plant the prairies and remove invasive species, but also went down into ravines and pulled out refrigerators, stoves, and car hoods. It was kind of like archaeology to them because they would find a glass milk jug and they would say, ‘What is this?’”

Adkins enjoyed his tenure at Earlham, but his rogue nature as an educator never diminished. He didn’t really fit in, and he was eager for a new challenge.

“Every administrator I had was sure the system wasn’t broken—I was. And they were going to fix me,” said Adkins. “That was part of the frustration in 1997 when I was offered the job (with DCCB). I was tired of fighting formal education. There are a lot of good things we do in public education, but there’s a lot of stuff that we could do so much better.”

Adkins’ brand of ‘informal’ education proved to be wildly popular. He eventually moved into the role of Environmental Education Program Coordinator. No one that has experienced his field day events or programs has not been moved by Adkins’ enthusiasm, spirit, wisdom, and conviction. It turns out, he was moved, also.

“It’s crazy the depth of relationships that you get blessed with when you’re a teacher,” he said. “I have so many kids out of Earlham that I have such a wonderful relationship with. The really surprising thing, too, is sometimes you have a kid that you think, ‘I never got to him.’ And then, 20 years later, they write you and say, ‘You know, I was in your class, and I was a little a**hole, but for some reason you always liked me. I can’t tell you how many times that the stuff we learned, I’ve used, and how much it’s influenced my thinking.’ And I think, ‘Wow.’”

Since announcing his retirement, Adkins has enjoyed the thank yous and congratulations from many of his former students and colleagues. Better now than—later.

“The nice thing is, it’s not a eulogy,” he said with a laugh. “I have made a point—when I knew someone is walking their death song—I have gone to friend after friend and mentor after mentor and sat down with them and said, ‘I’m not going to stand up at your funeral and say this sh*t. But I’m going to tell you now. I want you to know this while you’re here.”

Like a successful coach that retires after decades of victorious seasons, Adkins will leave big shoes to fill. He feels that the man walking into those, Mike Havlik, is up for the job. Havlik had been actively engaged with DCCB’s environmental education programs for over eight years as a naturalist. Plus, an experienced, knowledgeable staff remains.

“Hopefully you’ve done it well enough that you can walk away from it and your colleagues that are still in the game will maintain and do a lot of the great programming that we’ve had the chance to build and share,” Adkins said. “So I feel really good about that. I feel like a coach that’s walking off and thinking, ‘Yeah, we have a championship team here.’ There are really good people there and they’ll do a wonderful job. It will be fun to watch them.”