The other day, I decided that, with the weather improving (yea for spring!), it was time to get my kid outside. It's something that I don't do often enough, and I need to work on that. So I told him that he had to spend 10 minutes outside with me. We walked around the wetlands behind our house. The egg that a goose had laid the day before right below our bird feeder was still where I had move it - along the weed line behind our property. We found a couple of snake holes, some very pretty early spring blooms, and lots of deer tracks in the mud. As I headed closer to the marsh, I motioned to my son to follow me. He asked me, "How did you get out there?"
I said, "Don't you see the path between the weeds?"
Granted it wasn't a cleared path, but to me it was an obvious enough clearing to make an easy walk. As he tried to follow in my path, he was carefully avoiding all branches and treading so cautiously. I felt so sad for my son. I had never even showed him how to tramp through the woods.
It was a heartbreaking reminder to me that he will never have the childhood that I did. I visited my grandfather's home frequently, and he mowed out paths through the forest for us to explore. I was outside his house far more often than I was inside. I made up games with different plants (I still will break out the "pixie dust" if I happen upon a "pixie dust" plant), picked flowers, wandered through the trees aimlessly. I splashed in puddles and followed along the edge of small streams. I picked the most fragrant and beautiful lilacs to take inside so that I could sniff them over and over. Behind my granny's house, she would take me blackberry picking. There is still no better treasure than discovering a ripe blackberry unexpectedly on your adventure, and popping that delicious sweetness in your mouth! Although picking fresh peas out of a pod and crunching into them is a close second.
Oh, the memories!
Tonight, I made my son go outside again for a while. The wind was blowing hard, but the temperature was just right for a quick hike. We hiked a couple of the small paths that we and the neighbors keep cleared behind our line of cul-de-sacs. The goose egg was gone. I am hoping that it fed a fox or one of the coyotes I heard howling the other night. My son took his Nerf gun and pretended to have a war with the "enemy," which happened to be the ducks we spooked out of the marsh, and a couple of very vocal geese who were trying to shoo us from their territory. We saw plenty of deer tracks in the muddy paths, and we pondered which animal was climbing the birch tree and leaving its claw marks halfway up the trunk.
Before we headed inside, my son said, "My friend and I should have a pretend Nerf war out here this weekend when he spends the night."
It's no naturalist training, but for now, it's time that he wants to spend outside. And that's a small win!
No comments:
Post a Comment