Stomping in the Grass

We were talking about Richard Louv's book Last Child In the Woods, in which he states that children need to develop an attachment to the land. They need unstructured play in the outdoors in order to develop that attachment.

Quality grass stomping time

And yet, it seems that culturally we discourage children from really exploring nature. There's the obvious concern of how dirty they get, but it seems to me that people are regarded as being completely separate from nature, even among environmentalists. Nature is regarded as something that needs to be fenced off and protected from us. But who will want to protect something with which they do not have a deep relationship?

One of the key phrases of the Wilderness Act describes wilderness as a place "where man himself is a visitor who does not remain." The first time I read that phrase was painful, and it aches still. We are excluded as beings of the wilderness, a place in which we evolved.

I understand that the majority of humans have moved beyond living within the natural world to a point where we completely sculpt it to match our desires, and I'm all for preventing hordes of people from stomping across fragile alpine tundra, but that particular quote makes me feel as though we are being told that we are aliens who are visiting a world in which we do not belong.

A part of me, too, cringes when I see a natural space trampled, even though I understand the importance behind children exploring and manipulating the natural world. It is something I yearned for as a child.

We are fortunate to live near a natural area with a creek and trails where visitors can spy many stick structures, some astoundingly large, built by children. At times I feel a big hesistant to let my own daughter participate in something similar because of the scorn it brings from others who visit the park. One particular incident that comes to mind is when she and I watched another boy, about 7, build a "stick bridge." He was laying piles of sticks across a tiny creek, and my daughter "helped" by insisting that I drag more over.

A woman walking by stopped to ask what we were doing, clearly upset at the proceedings. She then began to lecture me on making sure the stick bridge was entirely destroyed, because it would dam up the creek and cause the trail and bridge to flood over. She clearly had more faith than I did in a seven year old's ability to dam up a creek with sticks. Even if it had been successful, the creek would have flowed around the sticks long before it would have flooded the trail.

But we need those spaces for free play. There needs to be spaces and wilderness corridors where wildlife are not threatened by human activity, but children (and adults, too) also need spaces for exploration and play that are more than an inert structure of metal and plastic surrounded by a well manicured plot of grass. 

On Exploring with Others

Leaving a trail of leaves for the deer to find

I've been taking my daughter out to various nature exploration groups where she can meet with other kids, make friends, and I can hopefully have some time to engage in conversation with another adult. (I often wonder why I didn't think of forming a group like these!)

Maybe it's her age, but plenty of times she's perfectly happy observing the other kids from a distance, playing by herself, or playing with me. On this day's hike, she would have rather let the other kids go on the hike while she explored on her own.

I'm always torn - should I encourage her more to follow along with the group? Or should we just indulge her personal interests?

At any rate, hopefully we can go out today (weather permitting - it snowed yesterday!) and she can just wander as she likes.

With Sincerest Regrets...

I have read this about a half dozen times this week - it never stops making me laugh. I feel like I should be a little sad, but the image in my head is just too funny.


With Sincerest Regrets

Like a white snail the toilet slides into the living room, demanding to be loved.
It is impossible, and we tender our sincerest regrets.
In the book of the heart there is no mention made of plumbing.
And though we have spent our intimacy many times with you, you belong to an unfortunate reference, which we would rather not embrace...
The toilet slides out ofthe living room like a white snail, flushing with grief...- Russell Edson

Of travel and trains and things

Sometimes the world feels distressingly small, without new places to be discovered, crowded with people. Perhaps part of that comes from growing up in such an urban society, or being inundated with the urban experience through the media. We move so quickly about that all sense of a journey evaporates. We are here and then we are there, completely missing the in between.

The missing journey occurs the most with flying, but can happen in cars, too. We focus on the road, on getting there quickly, confined to major highways that whiz by everything. The journey is there, but shadowed somehow, everything overlooked.

The thing that I discovered I loved about trains is the speed of the journey, the route it takes. Since I'm not driving, I have time to look around, to consider. The route is important too. Roads evolve, their routes change. Towns that were once busy stops are bypassed, forgotten, left to decay. Rail lines can't change so easily, don't have a reason to change, and one is left to confront the reality of these forgotten places.

It can be sad, in a way. Businesses long gone, factories closed. A cemetery with low walls of adobe, slowly crumbling away. Roads largely empty, save for a lone local traveler. Places that call out for me to stop and remember them.

The tracks run through places once discovered and then forgotten. Eyes witness these places, but very few feet tread there. A beach that hasn't been touched in a very long time. No trace of human footprints. Very rare in a place like California, during the summer. Another beach, surrounded by cliffs, seemingly impossibly to access, and yet there is evidence remaining, a fort built out of driftwood.

Secret places, little pockets of habitation. A lone person doesn't even glance up as we pass. A whole family sits on a lawn, waving as we race by. A little girl on a beach waves to the train. I wave back, knowing she can't see me, but feel some connection to the person who waved at the entity containing me.

In some ways, it can be a bit frustrating. I'm bound to the train and its stops. Places requiring further exploration need a separate journey back - perhaps a trip by car. From here, all I can do is watch those places disappear behind me.

Part of me wants to travel more of this country by train. I've only done so in one other country, but my guess is that there are not so many forgotten places along the tracks in other parts of the world. It took the freeways and fast cars and the desire for instant gratification in reaching a destination to create those places.Sometimes the world feels distressingly small, without new places to be discovered, crowded with people. Perhaps part of that comes from growing up in such an urban society, or being inundated with the urban experience through the media. We move so quickly about that all sense of a journey evaporates. We are here and then we are there, completely missing the in between.

The missing journey occurs the most with flying, but can happen in cars, too. We focus on the road, on getting there quickly, confined to major highways that whiz by everything. The journey is there, but shadowed somehow, everything overlooked.

The thing that I discovered I loved about trains is the speed of the journey, the route it takes. Since I'm not driving, I have time to look around, to consider. The route is important too. Roads evolve, their routes change. Towns that were once busy stops are bypassed, forgotten, left to decay. Rail lines can't change so easily, don't have a reason to change, and one is left to confront the reality of these forgotten places.

It can be sad, in a way. Businesses long gone, factories closed. A cemetery with low walls of adobe, slowly crumbling away. Roads largely empty, save for a lone local traveler. Places that call out for me to stop and remember them.

The tracks run through places once discovered and then forgotten. Eyes witness these places, but very few feet tread there. A beach that hasn't been touched in a very long time. No trace of human footprints. Very rare in a place like California, during the summer. Another beach, surrounded by cliffs, seemingly impossible to access, and yet there is evidence remaining: a fort built out of driftwood.

Secret places, little pockets of habitation. A lone person doesn't even glance up as we pass. A whole family sits on a lawn, waving as we race by. A little girl on a beach waves to the train. I wave back, knowing she can't see me, but feel some connection to the person who waved at the entity containing me.

In some ways, it can be a bit frustrating. I'm bound to the train and its stops. Places requiring further exploration need a separate journey back - perhaps a trip by car. From here, all I can do is watch those places disappear behind me.

Part of me wants to travel more of this country by train. I've only done so in one other country, but my guess is that there are not so many forgotten places along the tracks in other parts of the world. It took the freeways and fast cars and the desire for instant gratification in reaching a destination to create those places.