Flashback Friday: Take the Kids Outside

This post is from 2015, but the retrospective photos date back, in at least some cases, to 1998 when our first-born was a toddler. The message still seems completely relevant. Maybe I should do a second edition, showing our boys as teens and now adults, enjoying the outdoors with the family. (Oh, and yes, I know this Friday post is on Saturday. I consider knowing what day of the week it is a triumph!)

[Apparently I'd made some kind of plan to spiff up the blog, something I do on a regular basis--make the plans, that is, not necessarily carry them through]

In keeping with my new blog plan, instead of a book review, today I'm doing a sort of a trip review...a few shots of the kids enjoying the outdoors through the years, in hopes of reminding folks that there's no gift for the kids like taking them outside. I apologize for some of the photos--many of these pre-date our digital photography, and not all the scans turned out well.

Start them right from the beginning. Remember, the kid is a science experiment. Watch and see what happens!

Arches National Park, at 9 months

 

 

 

 

 Teach them things like scrambling early, and they will gain skill and confidence even faster than Mom's hair turns grey with worry. Guess what, Mom? They need to learn, and you have to deal with it!

Joshua Tree National Park

Yes, getting very, very dirty is part of the deal. It doesn't hurt them. I learned that from a woman's diary of the Oregon Trail! I never forgot where she wrote that "we learned that a baby doesn't die if it's not bathed for 3 months." Oy. One week? I can do it! (Tip: when they are babies, find or make nylon pants. Those brush off easily when they've been crawling in the dirt. By the time they are 4 & 5, as here, it's a lost cause).

Green Lake, Sierra Nevada Mountains, CA

Even when they still need furry friends in their packs, they can hike and camp and have a great time!

Lost Creek Wilderness, CO

Kids can always find things to do and play with in the outdoors. Amazing how much there is to explore when the screens and keyboards are gone, and especially if there is a body of water about (note to parents: plan hikes and camping trips around water, but be careful of whitewater or deep water!)

Caribou Lake, Indian Peaks Wilderness, CO

In the mountains or at the beach, there are toys everywhere! Our boys, at least, seem to be able to throw things into water/float them away endlessly.

Stinson Beach, CA

 

Expose kids to as many varied environments as you can, so that they see that the world has endless variety.

 The Desert!

Death Valley NP, CA, during the record bloom of 2005

Go Underground! Science lurks everywhere, like when you discover that it's cold underground, even when it's hot hot hot on the surface

Lava Beds National Monument, CA.

Get cold! A single-digit day with high winds, and walking on a lake were new concepts for our California boys (tip for other warm-climate folks visiting the cold: we made a thrift shop nearly our  first stop, and picked up a couple of warm jackets for the boys, which could be left behind when we finished).

Maine at the NewYear. It made sense to us.

If you go outdoors, maybe you can even make some new friends.

A boy and someone else's dog--the only kind he got to experience.

When camping you will almost certainly enjoy some quality family time.

If there's only one chair, you might get a kid on your lap.

And, finally, the kids might even spend more time reading!

A tent is a good place to read at the end of a long day.

I just wanted to share a few photos and remind everyone that being outside, in whatever kind of nature you have, is good for kids. If you can take them to experience different kinds of places, it's even better. But everyone can visit the park, or dig a hole in the back yard. Let kids experience the earth!

 

©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2021

 As always, please ask permission to use any photos or text. Link-backs appreciated.

 

Flashback Friday: What's for Dinner?

It's Flashback Friday--a fun blog-hop that's a break for bloggers and a chance to give something from long ago another airing. Click on the image above to check out the hop and find the list of participants. I hunted through the archives for a story to re-share. I couldn't remember this one from May 2014, but it made me smile when I re-read it, so here you go. It's short--only about 700 words.

What’s for Dinner?

Mom’s acting weird.  Well, that’s kind of normal, if you follow me, because she’s always weird, but usually she’s weird like wearing strange clothes and working all night on one of those bizarre sculptures she makes.  I won’t ever tell her this, but I don’t like them.  They have too many jagged edges.  They’ll tear holes in you if you get too close.  I sometimes wonder if she’s out to destroy someone, or if she just sees the world that way, all jagged.  Either way: weird.

But what’s really weird is that she’s started cooking.  No more Swanson’s pot pies, and no more trips through the fast food drive-through window.  So now, I have to eat what she calls “real food,” which is sometimes pretty unreal, if you follow me.

The thing is, her idea of real food can get pretty disturbing.  And that’s why I am sitting at the kitchen table doing my homework, instead of in my room with my music.  I’m keeping an eye on the cooking, between algebra problems.  I’m watching for that moment that says she’s gone over the edge, so I can try to save the rest of us.

She’s put on a big pot of water to boil.  That seems pretty safe, so I turn back to my math book.  6x + 7y=23.  If y=2, what is x?  Okay, algebra’s weird, too.  What do I care what X equals?  I can see at a glance that it’s not going to be a nice round number.  I don’t like decimals.  They’re messy.  And I need some kind of motivation for X, if I’m going to care why it’s multiplying six.

Pasta.  She’s gotten out the spaghetti, which is good, and matches the pot of water.  But a lot depends on what she wants to put atop it.  My palms start to sweat as she begins pulling things off of shelves and muttering.  She’s got an awful pile of weird stuff: ginger and allspice and beans, and for some reason a bottle of pickled pigs feet.  And is that an incantation she’s muttering?  We have never in our lives eaten pickled pigs feet, and I do not intend to begin now.  I forget all about algebra and concentrate on willing the bottle to disappear.

She puts the first cupboard load back on the shelves, and I heave a sigh of relief when the pigs feet disappear.  Then the search starts all over, and I start to sweat again.  What is that green stuff?  And is it supposed to be green, or is that a very bad sign?

Mom does the search three times, and I can’t tell what she’s selected.  By the third shelf of the third cupboard, I’m a nervous wreck, and algebra is a distant memory.  Anyway, I’m pretty sure this is the night she poisons us all, and I can only wonder if it will be on purpose or just because she let her artist’s imagination get loose.  But if I’m poisoned, I won’t have to turn in my homework, so I don’t hurry.

I start to pray.  I’m not religious, but when we studied world religions last fall, my best friend Griffin and I memorized prayers from every one of them, mostly in languages we don’t understand.  We made up a couple of our own, too, in the elf language J. R. R. Tolkien invented for The Lord of the Rings.  I repeat them all now.  Maybe at least one of the gods will appreciate the attention and save me.  And Dad and my sister, though by this time I’m thinking mostly of myself.

Mom plops the big pasta bowl onto the table, interrupting my prayers and scattering my algebra.

 I stare into the bowl, horrified.  It’s green.  Radioactive waste is green, isn’t it?  Or ectoplasm, or space aliens.  And mold.  Mold is green.

“Eat up,” Mom says.  “Come and get it,” she calls to Dad and Lily.

My hands are shaking.  We who are about to die. .  .

“It’s just pesto, for heaven’s sake Joseph!”

I sag in relief.  Pesto’s bad, but it’s better than interplanetary ecto-slime. 

Rats.  I’ll have to finish my homework after all.

###

©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2014
As always, please ask permission to use any photos or text. Link-backs appreciated!

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Kids grow faster than books

Well, maybe it only seems that way.  I don't usually write about my family, but this morning, my baby started high school.  That's enough to give any mom a funny feeling.  I'm not sorry.  I'm not a mom who wishes the kids would remain babies forever (2 a.m. feedings?  Ugh!  And diapers were never my favorite, either.  Nor having to haul a couple of toddlers with me everywhere I went).  Still.  High school.  Definitely big kids now.

Both guys went off together this morning.  For the first time in four years they are in the same school (same PTO!  Same Open House and Back to School Nights!).  And Second Son is no dummy.  He knows that he can count on his brother to fill him in on what he needs to know, see to it that he gets to the right place.  No nerves about the first bus ride, because he's got his brother.  At some point no doubt that will become a bit grating.  But meanwhile, he knows that he's got a good deal going.  Eldest Son even primed the teachers to like him (their Jr. High math teacher went so far as to tell me how sorry he was that I'd had only the two).

It's going to be fun watching these two in the next phase of their life as brothers.  Then in two years, Eldest Son gets to go off and pioneer a new place again.  And when it comes to college, who knows if they'll be together.  I hope they treasure this time.

Here are the boys on their first "self-propelled" pack trip, when they were 3 and 4 years old:

And this summer in the Canadian Rockies.  Snowball fights in summer!  Yeah! Boys grow up fast, but some things don't change.

These guys spent a month this summer sharing trails, a tent, and the back seat of our car, with remarkably few battles.  I think they'll go far.

Book Review: Camping for Kids

  Today's kid-lit review is non-fiction.  Camping for Kids, by Melanie A. Howard, part of the "Into the Great Outdoors" series from Edge Books.  30 pages, early to middle grades (?).

I stumbled on this book while sorting books at the library, and thought I should take a look, as we have been taking our kids camping, hiking, and backpacking since they were babies.  I should note, however, that this is not a how-to for parents, but more of an introduction to concepts for the kids in five brief chapters. 

The first chapter, "Out in the Wild," offers a brief summary of why people camp and the history of camping for pleasure in the U.S. (interestingly, some people were camping for fun while others were still walking behind their wagons and camping because that was the only way to get from Point A to Point B).  A final paragraph mentions various approaches to camping: bike camping, RVs, boating or hiking.  My only real problem with this chapter is that the lovely opening picture spread shows a tent on a sort of sandspit sticking out into a lake--definitely NOT an acceptable campsite (which should always be at least 100 feet from water, preferably 200 feet).

Chapter Two, "Packed up and Ready to Go," talks a little about essentials, tents, sleeping bags and backpacks.  It discusses water treatments, and finishes with car and RV camping extras.  My reaction to this was that it couldn't make up it's mind if it was for kids or parents.  As a general rule, it is not the children who are making decisions about things like water treatment, type of sleeping bag, or tent purchases, though it helps if the kids understand why they have or do certain things.

Chapter Three, "From Bear Bags to Bandages," covers exactly that, plus fire safety.  Again, I think the focus is off.  For children, it is less important to know that they should hang the food 100 yards from camp than to know that they should NEVER keep food in the tent.  The discussion of fire safety is more on target, as kids are the ones most likely to be paying attention to the fire.  I think it might not hurt to mention that care should be taken when "tending" the fire, based on the things my boys have thought of to do with fires over the years.  On first aid--advising children to "take a first-aid class before your trip" seems completely off, since few such courses would even accept children young enough to be reading this book.

Chapter Four is "We're Here.  Now What?"  This chapter offers a few nice suggestions about what you might do in and around camp, helpful for those who've never been outdoors enough to figure it out for themselves.

The final chapter, "Leave No Trace,"  outlines a few basic Leave No Trace (LNT) principles, like leaving no trash, camping on durable surfaces, and not taking anything from the wilderness.

My take on the book is that it can't make up it's mind what it's doing.  The writing is very simplistic, as for kids in about grade 3-5.  But the content deals at least half the time with matters that such children would not be managing.  Perhaps it's meant to give kids the info they need to get their parents to learn enough to take them camping?  If I were to write the book, I have to say that my focus would be more on showing kids why they want to go, and how to be safe and happy, using the gear their parents provide--tips like "bring a small favorite stuffy" will probably do more to help a child have a good sleep in the backcountry than a learned debate on the merits of down vs. synthetic sleeping bags.

2.5 stars

*********

 Here's the other result of my reaction to this book.  Many years ago I put together a little picture book and shared it with my friends.  I called it A is for Alpine, An Alphabet Book for Little Hikers.  After reading this "kids' camping guide," I have decided to dust off the alphabet, upload to Smashwords, and offer the book for 99 cents to anyone who wishes to have something to share with small children who may be camping for backpacking for the first time.  It doesn't do the same thing as Camping for Kids, exactly, and while maybe it's not brilliant,  I think it will help little ones and their parents get excited about getting outdoors.  Plus: pretty pictures, all from real packtrips we've taken with our real kids.  Who really don't care what their sleeping bags are made of as long as they are warm, and get candy.

I'll even put up the paperback on Amazon, though I sadly have to charge more for that, due to printing costs for color pages.

So watch this space for more information about A is for Alpine, and happy hiking!

I've put it up--still fussing with some issues, but it's on Smashwords now, for 99 cents, and will soon be available as a paperback at Amazon for $6.99!

Random Absurd Theories

Revisions are on track!  I've finished the first rewrite, aside from some typing.  Bouncing between that and my activities aimed at getting a bond measure passed for our suffering local schools has me exhausted but feeling like I'm at least doing something.

So, for amusement, I'll offer some of the random thoughts that occupy my brain at off moments.  Sometimes, just for fun, I like to invent absurd theories to explain things.  Here we find a few:

Pay the Gravity Bill  There's an old Calvin and Hobbes comic strip in which Calvin discovers his Dad didn't pay the gravity bill, and he floats away.  Well, it turns out that after a certain age, if you forget to pay the gravity bill. . . they turn UP the gravity.  Way up.  This explains those days when working out is just torture.  You didn't pay the bill, you get to suffer.

Too Many Athletes in Colorado  The reason there isn't enough oxygen for a good run in Colorado is that there are too many athletes and they have sucked all the oxygen out of the air.

Kids' energy supplies  We figured this one out well over a decade back.  Kids have separate stores of energy for different things.  For hiking, one source, and not a very big one.  For playing: some other, nearly infinite, source.  You arrive in camp after a three-mile hike with your 8-year-old so exhausted he can't even set his pack down, has to drop it with a crash in the dirt.  Two minutes later he's running up a mountain in pursuit of whatever it is that kids run up mountains to pursue, and doesn't stop until you force him to.
Corollary:  Kids get their energy by sapping it directly from their parents.  Ask any mother of toddlers.

Today you're a dophin, tomorrow a sea slug  Okay, this one isn't a theory.  More of an observation.  It's based on my swimming workouts, but the same thing is true for any kind of workout.  When a swim goes really well, I say I'm a dolphin--swimming smoothly and easily and could go on forever (or at least for a mile).  But other days, I'm lucky if I'm a sea cow, ponderous but not ungraceful.  I'm just as apt to end up a developmentally-disabled sea slug, whose limbs (do sea slugs have limbs?  Never mind) pay no attention to commands from the brain (I don't think sea slugs have brains, either. This may be the problem).  Anyway, it's generally true that if on Wednesday I'm a dolphin, on Friday I'm nearly certain to be. . . something less desirable. 

For biking, I guess you could say that if on one ride I feel like the winner of the Tour (ha!), the next ride I could be ridden into the ground by an Edwardian spinster on a one-speed with a wicker basket and a giant hat.

All of this may, of course, be related to theory #1, about not paying the Gravity bill.