Devolution

Night is falling. So is wet snow. We turn onto our street, and my son announces he wants to walk the dog when we get home. For months, I've been wheedling and bribing him to help with this task. And now, on the night my mother is home to help with this, and slush is glopping from the sky, and it's been a wretched day, he wants to walk the dog?

"Yeah! In the far away woods!"

Of course.

This is the season of yes. I have committed to looking up, to paying attention. After a deep breath, I take notice. My very own boy has offered to walk with me. In the rain! At night! I may be tired, but I'm not a fool. I wrangle us both into the house to don rubber boots, grab mittens, leash the dog. It is already dusk, and I have no time to scrounge for either umbrella or flash light, or to remember to pack a snack. It's just us and our restless feet.

"Hop in the stroller, kiddo!" He does, and I entrust him with Fenway's lead. In my flopping wellies, I jog the rattling stroller over a mile of black neighborhood streets, through the intersection, up the cul-de-sac, into the stretch of trees that can carry us into the deeper woods. The capricious weather needles my cheeks and creeps down my neck. My blood rises to meet it, defiant.

We park the stroller upside-down and tramp down the root-veined path. Untethered, all three of us tumble through curtains of bud-tipped shrubs into the forgiving mud. Bug and the mutt take turns surging into the lead. The mist deepens around us. My boy pauses to pick up a clump of wood he claims is coal for keeping us warm.

"It is getting dark," he says to me, stopping to notice scarlet-edged night slipping around the brush. "Can you find your way in the dark, Mommy?"

"Oh, yes, baby. I am right at home in the woods. I can always find my way."

"You're not scared?"

"I love it here." I spread my arms wide. "The forest is wrapping around us, giving us a big hug. The trees keep us safe."

He walks on. "I can hear the raindrops," he tells me. Then he grins. "One just got my lip!"

We twist over the damp bridge and into the creek. Bug is wary at its edge until I remind him he is in galoshes. He stamps right into the water. "Now one-two-three of us are walking in the river!" Fenway is already splashing upstream.

Shoulders squared, the little Shackleton makes his way along the creek, up and over the thickening brush. "Be careful of the prickers, Mommy!" He calls back, not waiting for my response. He scales an eroding wall of loose rock then descends back into the water. Even when the easy bank is within reach, he favors the tangle, the splash, the slip.

Then just like that, it is night. I see it has plopped down in its big easy chair and there is no chance of rousing it. Bug sees only the next eddy, the next swirling bend, his next step. The depth is hard to gauge. He is careful until he is not. Then, down he slips into a smooth, black pool. He sinks quickly, up to the knees. Water snakes with breathtaking suddenness into his boots, down to his bones. Before he has a chance to panic, I swoop in, grab him around the chest, and swing him over to the shore.

The mighty explorer shrinks down to a quiver and a sway. Even in the blackness, I can sense tears pushing back against the rain. A small voice whimpers, "It's really cold."

He leans in. I pour the water from the boots and peel off the socks. I hunch my broad back down, heft the cub on board. Crouched, iced to the marrow, we make our way back downstream. Darkness embraces us. The creek guides my blind feet. Bug burrows in, digging his ice-seared fingers into mama bear's armpits, pressing his cheek against my damp back. The pelt may be thin but it is durable. Thorned bushes bend deep, the knuckles of trees prod me gently along. Low and sure, I make my steady way towards the place where the forest breathes open and spills us over its threshold.

A blanket, mittens, relentless rain. We leave the safe embrace of forest and wind our way back through the strange wildrerness of the neighborhood. Brick and clapboard blink at our passing, uncomprehending. Our faces are clouds of wet fog. Our faces are swallowed by the singular smile of upending routine and shaking out ancient secrets. No one can see what we smuggle from the forest in our naked arms. No one even knows we are here

We have gone native. We are jungle. We are night.

Behind the Curtain

We wandered off the side of the road in the cul-de-sac while walking the pooch. Bug was all too eager to climb on top of a stump, declare himself king of the hill, and brandish his twig-scepter over all in his dominion. "I command the trees," he declared. "Grow!"

We scrabbled down in the dirt, found branches blown down from the storm, and shoved them into the mud at the base of the gnarled tree. "It worked," I said. "See? It's bigger. It grew."

Bored, Bug followed the dog through the brambles as she sniffed down a cowering rodent. Together, they nosed their way into the hollow base of a towering maple. They took turns shoving their heads into the mossy crevice. "Come out, little mouse," Bug called, menace in his voice. A piece of weather-crisped paper clung to the weeds nearby. "Mommy, look!" Bug charged after it, unfurled it and wiped off the mud. "A map! Do you think it's a treasure map?"

"Let's see. It has arrows on it." We bent in and assessed. "Let's see. M-A-P-Q-U-E-S-T. Well, looky there. I think you have found a treasure map!"

"Let's go find the treasure!" My boy charged down the cul-de-sac. "What does it say to do?"

A glance at the paper provided a good stall for considering options. Would it take us into the backyard? To the nearby school with its acre of play equipment? Eagerness and fatigue fought it out in me. It would be so easy just to hide a box of pennies in the sandbox as we have done for the past few weeks. But I have longed for my son to have his wild places. If I do not guide him there, who will?

"This arrow says to go left."

Over a decade ago, I moved into this neighborhood the first time. My folks reluctantly allowed me to occupy the guest room as I geared up for grad school. I stayed on for four years, walking these same loops and lollipops when I needed a fix of breath and sky. Now, back at home, after living in every other time zone in this great nation, the familiarity is both a comfort and a tender wound. Each home in this rareified corner of Northern Virginia is out-of-reach even while I inhabit an address here. I've walked my way right back around to where I was. What comes next? Is there any answer other than "I don't know?" The future is uncertain to the point of skipping over terrifying and crashing down on the other side. Call it an adventure. Saddle up the cyclone. Adjust the prism just so, and a crumbling path becomes the Yellow Brick Road.

Because my figuartive path disappears into the unknown whenever I try to get a fix on it, putting my feet on a real blacktop is the best way to keep the faith. Such small rituals keep me coloring inside the lines. I walk the dog the same two miles every night. Unfurl the ribbons of blacktop I have covered in thits patchwork neighborhood, and it would stretch halfway across the continent. I know these streets.

More importantly, I know the way in to the small swaths of undeveloped land whispering behind the McMansions. I call out to Bug. "It says to find the second green post and turn left. It will take us to a secret trail."

Bug gasped in delight. "There it is! The green post! The second one!" We veered over and he scooted down the side of someone's driveway. "Here? It says here?" Even he was not so sure.

"Yep. It's a secret trail."

Down into the roots and mud we traipsed, finding a small woodland where trees stretch their shoulders and the can breathe. Bug found the bridges the map told him to find. Then he discovered the bank of the stream where the map said we were to land.

"Where is the treasure?"

Oh. Right. Treasure. Think quick, mama. "It's buried. In the water. Let's look."

We bent down, dragging sticks through the trickle of the creek. Then a flash of light. "There!" He gasped. Sun glinted off a stone.

"It's a crystal!" We dragged it from the water, this square-ish hunk of rock. We washed it, marveled at its milky tone. On down the creek-bed we wandered. The erosion in the Difficult Run watershed is unstoppable. Exposed roots grasp at ever-crumbling banks. Mud sucks at bridge footings and athletic shoes. Pebbles and detritus churn in the living soil. Thousands upon thousands of tiny stones comprise the very ground. Adjust the prism just so, and riches are at your fingertips.

"Look! Coins!" Another rock sheared into thin, malachite-toned discs in our damp fingers. Oblong, glowing. Dubloons, no doubt. We gathered tiny bits. Rose quartz, gold, and a finger of silver. Bug washed his gemstones in the water. He tucked each precious thing carefully away in a box he had brought just for this purpose.

We discovered a post leaning on the fulcrum of an infested log. Bug climbed aboard, balanced at the center against both the vertical and horizontal wobbles, and announced, "This is my treasure! You cannot get it!" The lever became a see-saw, a ship, a throne, a cannon. We blasted through outer space, each tree a planet on our solar system tour to hide and then find the ever-elusive gemstones. Bug slid joyously down a mud-slick bank. "I don't need to hold your hand," he hollered back at me. He clung to roots to scale the other side.

Down into gulleys. Up along hills. My boy led the way with smug fierceness, commanding me to stay put so he could scramble down a log alone and slip momentarily out of sight. On our weary way back out into daylight, Bug ducked under a tangle of thorns and tore himself loose, declaring, "This is one messy adventure."

You said it, kid. We ain't in Kansas anymore.

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.