Today more than ever, teachers must prepare young learners to understand and address complex social and environmental problems. Many of these problems are directly related to how humans use natural resources to meet their needs. This is a core concept in geography and geography education. The College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework suggests that by the end of second grade students should be able to "Compare how people in different types of communities use local and distant environments to meet their daily needs," which is an ambitious standard for young learners due to the complex concepts and skills it involves. This article describes how Scott, who was then a kindergarten teacher at Milton Elementary School in Milton, Vermont, and Brianna, a preservice teacher from the University of Vermont in Burlington, co-taught an inquiry-based project that prepared students to meet this learning objective through experiential education methods. Scott and Brianna began with the basic belief that before young children could think about distant communities and environments, they needed to learn, from experience, about people and places much closer to home. The heart of the project was a winter field trip to the school's boiler room, where students learned from the mechanic about the wood-chip fueled heating system that kept their school and classroom warm.