Let Nature be Your Teacher

Another lovely, breezy, ordinary day. I intended to get up early to go pick blueberries yet again, but that so didn't happen. Staying up until 1:30 in the morning will do that to my early rising plans.

But, my handy hubby was up and at 'em early as usual. Today he built me a very nice and sturdy clothesline. (I should post a picture, but first I really should learn to upload pictures to the computer. One day, one day.)

Since he needed to wait for the cement to set around the clothesline posts, my husband volunteered to go with me and the girls to pick blueberries. So we loaded up and headed out to our friends' u-pick blueberry farm and picked about a gallon of blueberries. I've put up in the freezer the blueberries from our previous berry picking expeditions, but I needed some fresh ones for a recipe I wanted to try. It's a gelatin mold with fruit in it. I've never made one before, but I want to try this recipe because it doesn't look too difficult. It calls for strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries. We'll have to do without raspberries because they cost a stinkin' fortune at the grocery store, and we don't know anyone with a u-pick raspberry farm.

After picking blueberries, we made a stop at a cabin some friends of ours are remodeling. It's located in the woods overlooking a creek filled with lots of flat rocks and trickling water falls. It's a lovely, peaceful place and the girls went prepared to get wet. The cool water felt refreshing on our hot, dirty feet. Doodlebug and Little Munchkin loved it there. They were not ready to leave. I understood. There was something calming and centering about sitting there on the rocks, my feet in the water, watching my girls enjoying nature. I wasn't ready to leave either.

Knowing we would stop by, I brought my camera, but left it in the car. Though I could have easily retrieved it, I decided that this was one of those times that I wanted to be in the moment so I left the camera where it was. Instead, I took a mental snapshot of my two children as they climbed rocks, waded in the cool, muddy water, discovered raccoon tracks and sat by a little pool of tadpoles watching them swim about. I watched and listened and tried to answer their questions: "Are there bears around here?" "Do tadpoles turn into fish, too?" "Can a snake swim on the bottom of the water?" "Is there anything in the water that might hurt us?" "Will the little fish nibble my toes? Will it hurt?"

It makes me sad to think that there are many children who don't get the opportunity to really enjoy nature like we did today. We do not have rocky creek beds in our back yard to explore every day, but we are privileged to live in a lovely, woodsy, natural setting. Nature is all around us, and I encourage my kids to get out in it as much as possible. After reading Last Child in the Woods and For the Children's Sake, I am more convinced than before that it is critical for children to have opportunities to be outdoors. I believe it's possible, too, even for those who live in the middle of town though it may take a bit more effort to make it possible. I know because we used to live in an apartment in the city. For me, just being outside on a beautiful day is invigorating even if the terrain is characterized mostly by cement sidewalks and asphalt roads; but being outside on a beautiful day is positively exhilarating if I'm smack dab in the middle of nature, too.

Today was one of those days.