Around Beaver Lake



A detour on the Beaver Lake Trail

“Most children and youth today have little direct experience in the outdoors as a part of their daily lives.  While there are always exceptions, for the most part, children today are rarely engaged in unstructured and imaginative play of their choosing in rich and diverse nature-based settings.  A growing body of research suggests that this disconnection, this nature-deficit disorder, may be associated with an epidemic of childhood obesity, childhood diabetes, behavior disorders, depression and a diminished sense of place and community.  Heightened health problems, higher stress, higher aggression, reduced cognitive and creative capacities, lower school achievement, blighted sense of efficacy, and diminished productivity are among the possible associated negative impacts.  All children need leisurely, un-scripted, genuinely playful, and exploratory hours in their own backyards, neighborhoods, and in varied natural environments for their optimal development.” 

– Children and Nature 2009



Yikes!  Reading this sort of speculation invariably sends the GORP leadership team rushing for the real estate listings in Hanover County and Goochland.  Though lately we have resigned ourselves to our urban fate, we continue to fantasize about sending our children outside to play and having them return hours, not minutes, later, covered in leaves and dirt rather than exhaust fumes and broken glass.

"Ice Fishing" on Beaver Lake

But then it’s always something.  If it’s not nature-deficit disorder that will lead to our children’s ruin it’s drugs, alcohol, advertising, automobiles, air pollution, pesticides, plastic, poor attachment, poor parenting, our parents, poor schools, falling standards, testing, homeschooling, the race to nowhere, peer influence, lack of peers, lack of exercise, youth sports, violence, video games, the internet, Fox News, the cost of higher education, sugar, artificial sweeteners, religion, secularism, rising inequality, special interests and the degradation of the democratic process, climate change, dwindling natural resources, the collapse of community, asteroids, the loss of meaning in modern life, and, most obviously, television, adolescence and the NRA.  The list goes on.  It’s a wonder we didn’t just throw the kids into Beaver Lake on Sunday and be done with it.

Unfortunately, Beaver Lake is only a few feet deep.  According to an information placard posted near the shore, it is slowly filling up with organic matter and sediment, and within 100 years, through a process called lake succession, will be transformed into a wetland, then a wet meadow, and then a forest.  Nothing is permanent, I guess, but our wish to get a good night’s sleep.  

Which is something our second GORP outing did not produce here at GORP headquarters.  Nor did it resolve our nature-deficit dilemma.  But it was a nice walk in the woods with good friends, and we did not lose anybody.  Equally important, our children have not started asking us to stop.


Winner of Mo's Nature Hunt

Up next, on March 3^rd, we’ll do some exploring closer to home and visit Belle Isle.  Our tentative plan is to meet above the river on Oregon Hill at 10 a.m., hike down and over to Belle Isle for a Kids vs. Adults game of Capture the Flag.  We'll then have a picnic lunch on the rocks next to the river and possibly finish with a trek to Sweet Frogs on Cary St. (just east of VCU’s Cary Street Gym) for frozen yogurt. 



Looking further ahead, we hope to do a GORP overnight before the spring soccer season kicks into high gear, and we are contemplating a ropes course outing as well.  Details to come once we figure them out.

Hope you can join us on March 3^rd.  Anyone is welcome.  –Ben

G.O.R.P.