I was in the mood to hear some frogs yesterday, so we chose a forest preserve with a slough for our hike. The kids seem to prefer bike rides to hikes, but I wanted them to get out of their crankiness by feeling the earth a little closer up than on a bike.
It was a hot day, so the walk wasn't long. We stopped a lot along the way, looking into snake holes, collecting acorns, peering at spider webs - poking through the abandoned ones. The leaves are starting to change and the black walnut trees had their very un-walnut looking fruit hanging for the picking.
There was no path cleared to the slough, so we walked through a nicely maintained savanna to get there. Obviously this preserve has a corp of volunteers that have been restoring and reclaiming it from the buck thorn, native grasses and wildflowers are growing in the spaces between the trees.
While the boys headed back to the car to use the porta-potty, I watched my daughter wade through the cattails in search of the animal she could hear in there. She was completely lost in her task, oblivious to anything around her. I sat on a glacier-littered stone and thought of the hours I spent as a child doing just as she was then. There was a creek running through the neighborhood where we would make boats of out leaves and float them, catch frogs, toads and salamanders, make houses for bugs, larger structures for ourselves and generally get lost to the world for hours at a time. There was also a slough down a meandering path across the road and my family would hike it every weekend, cross country skiing in the winters.
My girl turned around after about 20 minutes to make sure someone was still there with her. I would never have had to do that, my mother would not have been there. We could just walk out our front door to get to the wilderness around us. We lived with the mud, the bugs, the birds and snakes. The snakes! My parents yard was full of snake and chipmunk holes. Where I now live, holes in yards are almost as evil as dandelions.
My children have to be loaded into the car for the same outdoor experience. It makes me wonder if we should move even farther away from our friends and activities so my kids can gain that eight intelligence, be in touch with the natural world.
My girl never found her muskrat in the cattails, but she did get to pet a horse on the way back through the woods. And she felt the earth beneath her feet, smelled the season turning to fall and took a nap when we got home.
2 comments:
Sounds like a great experience. I know what you mean. I wonder sometimes too, especially since my kids often beg to move to the country. The love it so much. Not many computer jobs out there though.
I know! I always think - we'll have a lot of land, I'll plant a big kitchen garden, raise goats and chickens. And then I remember that I lose interest as soon as the plants are in the ground. No weeding or watering. We still have tomatoes on the vine. And three plants never got staked this year. And we'd likely be allergic to both the goats and the chickens.
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