Dear Friends

January 17, 2013

Dear Friends,

If you are anything like us, you have at times worried about the amount of time your children spend indoors – inside the house, inside the car, inside the classroom swimming pool – and have wondered what happened to that world of outdoor play that most of us recall so vividly from our own childhoods.  What happened to the woods and creeks, the dirt and ditches, the hills and holes “to China”, the fields and alleys and vacant lots and other patches of untamed space where we as children could wander, wonder and get lost from adults?  When did childhood become so scheduled, so rushed, so plugged in?

Here at 1523 Hanover Avenue we have been worrying and wondering a lot, brooding over our family’s thread-bare relationship with the natural world, sinking into a gloomy winter funk of nature-deprived dreariness, depression and despair.  Yes, we do have a 2-year-old, but still...

In desperation, we have resolved to get outside more this year, to try to re-nature our lives by visiting some of the parks in the region, places with which we have little or no familiarity.  As we have resolved to do this at the start of each of the past few years and then mostly failed to follow through, we thought it might make sense to reach out for help.  We thought we might see if some of our friends could show us how it’s done or, for those like us whose children can’t distinguish a chicken from a duck, at least share in our outdoor folly.

Next Saturday (Jan. 26), if the weather isn’t too terrible, we intend to spend the morning exploring Poor Farm Park in Ashland, and the more of you who can join us the more likely it is we will be able to persuade our children to come along – and the more likely it is we will show up ourselves.  After a few hours of hiking, exploring and messing about in the woods, we will fall back to Ashland Coffee & Tea for hot chocolate and lunch.

If the weather is bad, we intend to go bowling and drink a lot of beer instead.

So, if your schedule permits, we hope you will consider joining us next Saturday, say about 10 a.m.  Poor Farm Park features a 2.1 mile loop trail through the woods, much of it running alongside swiftly moving Stagg Creek (says our guide book), with numerous other single-track trails carved out by mountain bikers.  (We will not be bringing bikes ourselves, but the park is excellent for mountain biking if anyone is so inclined.)  Most importantly – and we confirmed this ourselves a couple weeks back – it is a place where it is possible to get Slightly Lost but very difficult to get Terribly Lost.  However, for anyone who gets especially nervous about this kind of thing, Mo will be available to help you with your estate planning documents prior to setting out on the trail.

If this interests you and works with your schedule, let us know, and next week we’ll send you bush-or-bowl confirmation, directions and any further instructions.  Also, please feel free to forward this invitation to anyone else you think might be interested.

Hopefully this won’t be the last time we do this, but it should be emphasized that we have no idea what we are doing, or whether we’ll want to do it again.  Nevertheless, we do have a name for the endeavor:  the GO Richmond Project – the Get Outside Richmond Project.  Or...

G.O.R.P.

We hope to see you soon in the great outdoors.

Best wishes,
Ben and Mo


Ben and Maureen Ackerly
Richmond, VA