Playing in the Tall Grass

I am a father of two beautiful sons and as I make my way down the road with them together in our lives I have been looking back to my childhood. What is it that caused me to be so captivated and passionate about the natural world. Why do I love spending time outdoors so much and how can I pass my appreciation for nature on to them as a gift. Reaching back to my early days I picture the landscape of our semi-rural neighborhood and my favorite places appear vividly in my mind.

Of course there was the tree house which was rebuilt when I was 5 years old after our teenage neighbor and his friends accidentally burnt the old one down. It sat perched in a giant cottonwood tree at the bottom of the long hill below our house overlooking the large irrigation ditch that was home to countless crawdads and frogs. It had a cool trap door and a great tire swing that we used to jump off of into the ditch in the summer before the ditch dried up.

Beyond the ditch was a good sized pond that was chock full of frogs, turtles, salamanders and all kinds of crazy bugs and crawling creatures. Although it was often trampled by cows and quite stagnant the pond was an aquatic realm of exploration and adventure for my brother and me. We once built a rickety raft out of plywood and logs that we found lying in surrounding fields. We would pole around the pond in search of critters to spy or nab for our aquarium at home. The pond was hidden by thick walls of poplar trees that encircled the watery little world and despite being only a 1/2 mile from our house I always felt like we were worlds away from our parents, school, homework and typical suburban life in general.

The ravine at the bottom of our vast grassy hill that led to the irrigation ditch was always overgrown with very tall grasses and was far enough from parental calling distance that it provided the perfect escape for adventure. My siblings and our neighborhood cohorts would convene in the ravine and create tunnels forts through the tall grass interlinking them into a vast network of hiding spots and escape routes. We would break up into teams and commence our warlike hide and seek games which lasted for hours. The games consumed me and nothing else existed outside of the world we had created in this grassy ravine. There was excitement, challenge, fear, adventure and surprise. The things that I love about the outdoors to this day. 

There is never a dull moment while on an adventure in the great wild. Challenge, excitement and surprise are around ever corner of the trail and in every new landscape I explore. The challenge I’m finding as a parent is to allow that space for my children to experience it on their own, to let go of my fears and desire to control and protect their existence and let them find the things I did as a child playing in the tall grass.

~ by c4hair on May 28, 2008.