The place where my parenting has been the most publicly coached is a small stream on the side of Sugarloaf Mt, in western Maine. The stream is one of those joyful mountain brooks that’s mostly rocks and sand, but with a lot of tributaries, it never dries up in the Summer and surges with snowmelt in the late Spring. Our kids love it: in the winter they test all areas to see if the ice will hold and in the rest of the year they get as cold and wet and muddy as possible. From the time they can stand, throwing rocks into its deepest pools has been their mountain pastime. A couple of years ago, I led the older kids on a hike up the stream. No trail, just hopping rocks and scrambling up. They’re begging to do it again.
People seem to be afraid that those with the best senses of balance and lowest centers of gravity, namely kids, might get injured. The stream is unsafe. Many the kind mountain climber or concerned cross country skier has scrambled down the embankment to warn me that my kids are playing on rocks and near a small body of water. I’ve come to know that a person only needs an inch of water to drown. These are people who, by the looks of it, are often climbing mountains or skiing in the wilderness alone. No one warns you that your kid plays too many video games, but there’s a parade of people bearing warnings about the stream. (Somehow, these people aren’t interesting in keeping their dogs away from the stream.)
I could spend a fair amount of energy keeping my kids safe and dry and slightly away from the stream. But as a suburban Thoreau, I try to give my kids the tonic of wildness. It’s good to let them learn how thin the ice, slippery the rocks, and cold the water. Sometimes they run home crying. Mostly, they find good rocks, make big splashes, and make ‘forest bathing’ quite literal.
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4 humans & "the tonic of wildness"