Trails to Rails

April 7, en route to Texas Beach.

“The thing that strikes me now when I think about the Wilderness of Childhood is the incredible degree of freedom my parents gave me to adventure there. A very grave, very significant shift in our idea of childhood has occurred since then. The Wilderness of Childhood is gone; the days of adventure are past. The land ruled by children, to which a kid might exile himself for at least some portion of every day from the neighboring kingdom of adulthood, has in large part been taken over, co-opted, colonized, and finally absorbed by the neighbors.” – Michael Chabon

 

Into the great glut of adult-directed spring activities goes GORP.  Earlier in the week we were feeling a bit overwhelmed by all that we’ve got going on, not to mention depressed over another act of senseless violence, this one violating an outdoor activity that hits close to home.  We were prepared to yield to the demands of the swim meets, soccer games, school festivals, social commitments and whatever else we’ve stuffed into our spring weekends and push off our sixth GORP outing until time somehow slowed down.  But maybe it is times like this when we most need to get our children outside in nature, to connect with what is basic and fundamental – to try to make time slow down for them.  For it is times like this when we are reminded that the time ahead is never guaranteed.

Last night, speaking to an audience at the University of Richmond, Richard Louv opened with the following reflection:

“Chased by an unending stampede of 2,000-pound automobiles and 4,000-pound SUVs, we cocoon inside our homes.  The assault continues.  Unsettling, threatening images charge through the television cable and overwhelm us.  Hyper-vigilance trumps mindfulness.  Where do we find respite?  The poet Wendell Berry offers direction:

“When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be . . .
I come into the peace of wild things . . .
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”

Of course what I would so often like to be free from is my own children.  A weekend where they are all outside, messing about on their own from morning until night, while I come into the peace of a long nap, that’s the lost terrain I most long to recover.  Possibly this would be inappropriate for our 2-year-old – we might still have to supervise him or at least make sure the gates to the playground across the street are well secured – but that we have failed utterly to provide such a world for our older children, or failed to force them to create it for themselves, is a source of much handwringing in this household.

Monday’s massacre in Boston, on top of the earlier horror in Newtown, will only lead to even more careful monitoring of our children.  Although the bogeyman here at GORP headquarters is a not a terrorist or deranged 20-year-old but a two-ton Toyota with a texting driver, the end result is much the same.  We keep them close, on a short leash.

Should it be otherwise?  Our April 7th outing to Texas Beach included an encounter with railroad tracks that challenged my obviously limited capacity to adequately assess risk.  GORP has not had a truly stupid-daddy moment to date – and this one, my own children’s subsequent visions of a fast-approaching train bearing down on them notwithstanding, passed without incident – but it’s only a matter of time.  Much of what I think should be perfectly permissible would merit a visit from child protective services, and if I’ve learned anything in nearly ten years of parenting it is that much of what I think is flat-out wrong.  It’s not all wrong, but how to distinguish between what is wrong and what is right?

To fault our national obsession with childhood safety and risk minimization for the diminishment of childhood over the past thirty years would be a gross oversimplification of what is a highly complex cultural phenomenon.  Letting our kids loose to play chicken with freight trains is not the answer to this problem – however appealing that prospect seems to this parent most afternoons.  Besides, “Even if I do send them out,” Michael Chabon asks, “will there be anyone to play with?”

“What is the impact of the closing down of the Wilderness on the development of children’s imaginations? This is what I worry about the most. I grew up with a freedom, a liberty that now seems breathtaking and almost impossible. Recently, my younger daughter, after the usual struggle and exhilaration, learned to ride her bicycle. Her joy at her achievement was rapidly followed by a creeping sense of puzzlement and disappointment as it became clear to both of us that there was nowhere for her to ride it—nowhere that I was willing to let her go. Should I send my children out to play? ­ – Michael Chabon

A parent-led outing to Great Shiplock Park, where we will be Sunday afternoon, is a far cry from the wilderness of my imagination.  That wilderness may no longer exist.  Still, as Louv reminded us last night, there is wilderness all around us and perhaps the best thing we can do for our kids is to take them out into it ourselves.  If you can’t be with the nature you love, he said, love the nature you’re with.

   

GORP at the western end of the Texas Beach Trail.

 

G.O.R.P.