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Chris being happily off to school, BMX biking temporarily on hold, snowboarding yet to start, I find myself in an autumnal mood akin to fall cleaning - and hence I will write a completely different column this time. It may not be directly related to trips with kids into the great outdoors, but the values behind doing such trips are intensely related to what I want to say here.

As I continue to periodically fill in at Mesa Verde as Ms. Park Ranger, the legacy of the Civilan Conservation Corps (CCC) has infiltrated my mind. The CCC built that Park, really. A horde of young men descended and made the dioramas in the museum, set stone for walkways, poured concrete. You have them to thank for the Park you see today. As a result, I've spent some time dreaming up public policy as it relates to our youth. When I relayed my ideas to some visitors to the park the other day, I received united approval for them. So allow me my soapbox and let me say that, if I were president (Are you listening, Hillary?), here's what I would propose:

Nobody in their right mind should be in a classroom in seventh and/or eighth grade. Or very few of them should be, anyway. Hence, with three hots and a cot, some decent counselors/dorm cops, and good public management, I suggest we ship our 12- and 13-year-olds off somewhere moderately local to do public works. They can pick potatoes. Get biodiesel plants up and running. Help local farmers hay their fields, tidy up the place for fall, design ad copy in the depths of winter, plant come spring. Or they could form the basis of an awesome day care operation. In my town, at least, the day care shortage is at crisis levels. If we let seventh graders babysit, why not let them be the core of a day-care program? The possibilities are endless. Trail maintenance, mural painting, museum development, rudimentary bookkeeping - you name it.

Now, nobody should go directly into college, either. Having spent much of my career teaching 18-year-olds how to write, I can tell you a great many of them should first go out and sweat in the world. This time, take them farther away. Imagine if the country's 18-year-olds had been organized into national service after Hurricane Katrina. New Orleans would have been rebuilt in six months with a fraction of the cost and no corruption. Disaster relief, the military, inner-city development, backcountry monitoring and maintenance, wilderness rescue - once again, you name it, these kids could do it.

Of course, I sound like a raging socialist. National service? Well, dudes of private industry, small government, libertarian bent, I actually think we'd spend far less on government and need far less from government, if we had such programs in place. And here's the kicker: It would unite us all with a common experience. We might not agree with each other any more than we do now, but with two years of our youth spent toiling alongside other youth whom we'd never otherwise encounter, everyone would have the security of knowing that they shared a similar experience - of sweat, labor, love, and consciousness-raising - with another American soul. And that, my friends, strikes me as grounds for true civic engagement.

A girl can dream. But as I look at Chris, and his friends, and the college students I have taught, I have realized that kids, actually, want to serve a purpose. We take them fishing/hiking/biking so that they will connect with something bigger than themselves, so that they will learn how to build fires and find their physical limits. Yet they often come home to the same fragmented, listless space of adolescence in modern-day America. So much of TV watching, aimless computer-surfing, etcetera, strikes me as young hearts and minds yearning for a time when they had to milk the cow or the farm wouldn't run. So let's give them a purpose. Let's get them out there and doing some of the essentials involved in operating a nation. As a kid, I can't imagine a bigger honor than to carry that torch, and as a nation - well, forgive me - I think we could use it.

Katharine Niles is the author of the award-winning novel The Basket Maker.