Junior Aubrey Sieler’s wild heart came from the endless entertainment she finds in nature – The Central Trend

On junior Aubrey Sieler’s highly anticipated trip to her cabin, Fourth of July went wrong when she took on the responsibility of saving a fish’s life.

Her family’s tradition is to spend the holidays in Cadillac at their waterfront cottage and light fireworks over the lake, but when Aubrey and her cousin began throwing fireworks into the water to watch the smoke rise to the surface rose, she learned the consequences of the usual pyrotechnics at the beginning of July.

“The fish started swimming [the firecracker]and we both said, ‘No, no, don’t go for it,’ and it ended up swallowing it,” Aubrey said. “We heard a small bang and it floated to the surface. This is the weirdest part, but sometimes when you start shaking a “dead” fish they come back, so [we got in the water]grabbed it by the mouth and began to tremble. Eventually it just swam away, but I don’t know how it could still be alive.”

When she is asked to recall a time when she felt carefree, memories like the fish incident come to the fore. Her outdoorsy family – her father and uncle are her greatest mentors in her fishing and hunting – have passed down the genes that ensure she thrives in the great outdoors.

Although she doesn’t have much experience with camping, it’s simply the overall time spent in nature that has shaped her wild heart. Although her travel destination is usually the harbor right outside her cabin, Aubrey has a wish list of destinations that give her a change of scenery. At the top of her list is Australia, and although every other animal a human encounters in the country is deadly in some way, her desire arose after her discovery of conservationist Steve Irwin and a desire to keep his environmental legacy alive.

“We’ll go camping maybe once a year, and I like road trips, but we don’t go often because I have a big family with four siblings,” Aubrey said. “[Being outside] is just a big break from everything. It’s easy to be alone, but I like to do things with my family. Then we go fishing, and when I’m stressed that’s all I really want to do. There is a small spot right at the end of the dock by our cottage [that I love].”

Aubrey’s weekend trips to her cabin are something she looks forward to all week, even if it doesn’t offer her much variety. Not to mention, it also gives her a special understanding of the waters she has been fishing for so many years. She will know the lake that surrounds her When she graduates from high school, her cabin will be better than the back of her hand.

Along with the traditions of her home, the family’s love of nature (expressed primarily through her father and uncle) also came full circle when a hunting trip ended with her killing her first deer in the same field where she had lived many years ago. The Thanksgiving holiday on her grandmother’s farm, now owned by her uncle, proved to be the perfect setting for her first recording, even if she was left empty-handed for the first few days.

“The third day I didn’t want to go out because it was so cold – probably around 20 degrees – and I felt so comfortable inside,” Aubrey said. “But they woke me up at 5 a.m., and [I ended up going] because it was the last time; I thought we wouldn’t see anything. We had heating [in the blind]so I went near the heater. I was in the blind and I’m pretty sure I fell asleep because they woke me up and about thirty minutes later a big buck came through.”

Her first buck was a proud moment for the entire family, especially since they went into the experience blind. Although she had hunted before, Aubrey had never shot small game before.

She recognizes that her enthusiasm for hunting and even fishing is unique among her peers, yet maintains that under the best of circumstances she would not want to spend her time doing anything else. Compared to the generation aging in a predominantly online world, the time spent on the phone puts them in a different headspace than when they devote their time to an activity in nature.

“I feel like when I’m on the phone I think it’s a break, but afterward I’m more stressed,” Aubrey said. “When I can actually do something, I feel a lot better. [Being outside] is a great stress reliever; It feels like an escape, and I end up more excited about things when I’m not [inside or] at school.”

The difference between being cooped up in a smaller place and feeling the vastness of the world outdoors has led her to understand the creative freedom she achieves in nature.

In addition to the benefits it has for the more innovative and quiet part of Aubrey, the memories she made with her family in this special environment continue to influence the way she wants to live the rest of her life. It’s not the Instagram updates from childhood friends or the endless hours of YouTube she has yet to explore that she wants to remember, but the camping trips, her hunting trips with her father and uncle, and the idea that they were endless There are lots of fish to catch that will move them forward.

“When I finish scrolling through my phone, I ask myself, ‘Where did all the time go?’ and I feel like I could have actually done something,” Aubrey said. “But if it’s actually you [being productive]you just feel good about it. Then you have things to remember. Twenty years from now, I don’t want to say, ‘Oh, I just scrolled through my phone my entire high school career.’ I want to remember things.”