Wild or Nest

If getting our kids out into nature is a search for perfection, or is one more chore, then the belief in perfection and the chore defeats the joy. It's a good thing to learn more about nature in order to share this knowledge with children; it's even better if the adult and child learn about nature together. And it's a lot more fun.
- Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods

On the shore of Lake George at the foothills of the Adirondacks, a canopy of trees sheltered our home. I could walk out the front door of our house following a wooded trail up to the top of Buck Mountain without ever crossing a road. Bug grew up in that place, and in two other places like it in two other time zones. Logs made from trees felled by storms became the makeshift jungle-gym. A swing, a hammock, and several bird-feeders dangled from the trees surrounding our cabin. Despite this abundant temptation, Bug never did discover the heady allure of climbing trees.

By moving to the outer reaches of the DC metro area, Bug has inadvertently traded slopping through beaver dams for metro rides and trips to Costco with Gramma. Shaggy mixed deciduous forest skirting the edges of jagged peaks has given way to manicured ornamentals dotting evenly edged lawns. Sometimes I cannot bear this re-ordering of my little boy's relationship with the natural world.

Worry cannot gain a foothold, thought. I will not let it. The kid is four and full of adventure. He plays as rough on the blacktop driveway as he ever did in a mud bog. It is also wise to remember that our little corner of  wilderness had neither museums nor decent kid's theater -- two things Bug has decided to love. Ultimately, this accounting is the burden of being a grownup. My little boy does not seem to measure the worth of one form of play over another. Here in the suburbs, he laughs with his whole body just like he always has.

I have to admit, I was delighted when Bug went slamming out of the house one day last autumn without asking permission. Despite his lack of a chaperone, I was secretly ecstatic to find him already three branches up the white pine in the front yard. Without warning or fanfare, my son had become a tree climber.

Throughout the fall and into the first chill of winter, Bug did his level best to master that tree. He could hoist himself about ten feet up without help. My son possesses that magical four-year-old cocktail of tenacity, flexibility, and foolishness. He figured out how to use his belly, limbs, and balance to get both up and down, only falling once. Bug had me clamber up ahead of him a time or two to provide the motivation for greater height when he someday acheives the same.

Two simple rules have governed the tree climbing: 1) an adult has to be watching, and 2) the kid has to get both up and down on his own. For a few sweet months, this tree was our one sliver of the wild woods, one glinting souvenir from our previous life.

In the recent snowstorm that brought the DMV to its knees, power lines and patience levels were not the only casualties. Branches all over the region buckled under the weight of accumulation. Our tree was hit harder than any other on the property. Bug was momentarily awed by the destruction before he tromped off to pound footprints in the drifts.

A few days after the storm, my folks called in a couple of guys with an impressive array of power tools and an extension ladder. The duo worked in tandem to shear the trunk clean of all branches twenty feet straight up. They went even higher in places, amputating limbs that had sustained injury and lay limp in the crown. When they drove off in their pickup truck, I looked at the tree and felt fate sucker-punch me once again. They had left not one knot big enough for my boy to hoist himself up.

This tree had been the last on our postage-stamp property with branches inviting ascent. Now, naked and groomed like so much of this neighborhood, it cannot provide risk and adventure as it had before. Another loss my boy has to sustain. Another positive spin this mama has to manufacture. "There are other trees," my own mother pointed out. Angry and sad, I grumbled back, "No there aren't. There aren't any other trees."

Of course, I do not believe such dire declarations. Even if I do, even if for one second, I will not speak them out loud. Maybe this yard, this patch of land is not the place where we will become our feral selves. But we will find our next thicket. We pass through here as we have so many places before. We grab hold of the rough edges, we hoist ourselves into the cradle of the moment and treasure it for its brief grip. My son may find another tree. He may not. But he will watch me to learn how to inhabit his own wild, mammalian body. Together, we will seek another manner of ascent. And then another.