Take a Kid Outside

Suburbia USA - Sometimes its just too easy to grant the kid his wish of staying inside to play Legos. Too easy to use that as a convenient excuse to tap a few more emails back to HQ, to aimlessly check the stream flows again (yep, still as blown out as they were a few hours ago, Einstein), or to piddle around the house trying to shorten that honey-do list. Sure, its better than staring at the tube, but its also too easy to get the kid outside for an exploration.

This morning I took Stefan for a 500 yard walk down to the park, where some distant fork of a remote branch of Four Mile Creek struggles to find its way through a wetland woods. Usually dry, but recently with a bit of moisture to it, massive cottonwoods, thick cattail marshes and scrappy willows try to protect it. We donned Wellingtons (or galloshas, as my grandmother would have said), a camera and a bug box and and headed over the concrete bike paths through the neighborhood in our shorts.

At the bridge where most folks zip over on their bikes, we swung off over the bank onto a thick muddy bulldozed path. Oooh, that smell - mud, humidity, decaying wood. Much better than plastic bricks. The trail was maybe 300 yards long but filled with wonder. We saw deer, coyote and raccoon

tracks in the mud. We noticed oil slicked puddles and talked about how water contamination starts. We looked at the marsh and talked about its evolution - once a pond, now a marsh, someday terra-firma. So good, that after exiting Stefan wanted to do it again. So we did. This time we took a turn at the rock and crossed over the log and, low and behold, found a swing hanging from a tree limb. Swinging and twisting. Laughing and joking. Amazing how a small parcel of wilderness opens up the mind. And as we sat there, a coyote walked past (Stefan's first), looked at us, and continued on its own exploration.

And an hour later we were back home. See, easy peasy. Go ahead, take a kid out, even if its in Suburbia.