NISD GT/OLC Book Study: Part 1 Reflection, Last Child in the Woods
The role of the outdoors in my childhood….
Dad immediately shares a few stories of playing outdoors. He
shares two new ones I hadn’t heard before. One about him and his friends riding
their horses through the Bottom (Sulphur River bottom), across some land their
families had leased and the experience along with that. It involved removing a gate,
being gone all day, and when they got home, their Momma was soooo mad. We she
found out they had gone all the way to Nelta, she was really mad! Dad also
chuckled that this time, his mom had received a phone call from the neighbor
that he saw some boys on horseback across (so and so’s) property. “That was
when we got the phone. Before we had the phone, we rarely had neighbors tattling
on us.”
Can you imagine? Exploring the outdoors. On horseback. With
no phone? Or landline? How amazing is that? And scary in the context (or perceived pressures) we have
today?
Let’s pause for a moment. This is the second time I have
read this book. The first was in 2015 at the beginning of my OLC Coordinator journey.
It prompted so much change and educational theory in how I would make choices
on outdoor experiences for students. This book was timely to me six years ago,
but relevant to my learning and leadership now. I can connect more with the
research and ideas presented now, than I could have six years ago. (Experiences
truly are momentum for learning and change.)
You might wonder why this has anything to do with the prompt,
or again, why so hard to answer? Well, I think because of the active, adult
experiences in the “children in nature” movement I have been involved with the
past six years, makes the prompt harder for me to connect to my own personal childhood
experiences. I have a multitude of “ecstatic” moments in nature as an adult that far outshine those childhood memories alluding me. But I’ll write on that later. 😊
My Dad has just finishing sharing a story about trying to
trap racoons stealing feed in the barn. I can’t help but think about all the
stories in the book parallel to my dad’s. And analyzing those experience for
the academic, problem solving, risk taking and SEL enriched learning that
happened with this racoon problem, along with all the stories he has shared. (He
has a storybook amount of stories and I cannot even write a short essay!)
I share my dilemma with my dad. That I feel like I didn’t have many experiences outdoor as a kid…..he
about choked on his coffee. “Riding bikes, climbing the few trees we ever had,
just playing outside…you and your sisters played outside ALL the time!.” He
said I loved bugs so much when I was a little girl, that they bought me a net,
and a book called “Critters.” He said I was constantly trying to catch bugs and
learn about them, and even brought in a wasp one time caught in my net. My dad mimicked how he remembered me holding the net to bring it inside to show my mom, “your
Mom didn’t like that at all.”
He then asked, “what’s the first memory that comes to mind
with being outdoors.”
Rocks. Digging for rocks. Hunting for rocks. Riding my bike
trying to carry rocks. Rocks!
As a Kindergartener I wanted to be a paleontologist. My mom was
constantly encouraging me to go outside and dig. So I did a lot of that. I was
determined to discover a new fossil. Occasionally the neighborhood kids would
join in, but not fervently digging alongside me. Our house was right next to
the drainage ditch, and we would have water sometimes after a flood, expose new
things. One time, it exposed a giant rock. It seemed huge to me as a Kindergartener, but thinking
about it now, it was probably the size of a kid’s lunchbox. One of the neighborhood
kids, Robert Weaver, would play with me often, and occasionally dig with me. He
helped me discover this huge rock, and carry it to my backyard. Well the next day,
my rock was gone! I just knew that Robert Weaver took my rock! Who else would
care?
So, I got on my bike and rode down the street (four houses)
and decided to get my rock back. I jumped the fence and found it back there. As
I heaved it into my arms, I look up and notice something. In the kitchen
window, a man was staring across at me as he slowly raised his coffee mug to
his mouth, with a look of, “what is going on here?” And in my panic state of
being caught in Robert Weaver’s backyard, by his dad, without permission, I
dropped MY rock and bolted.
My Dad chuckled and said sounds like I found a memory. We of
course analyzed it further and discussed how even though his outdoor experiences
really were connected to nature and wild things, mine were connected with
playing outdoors. Recalling many memories at that moment, many of them involved roaming the neighborhood streets in the rural towns we grew
up, played at the park, rode bikes, played basketball and just really, played
with our friends outside, raised lambs and hogs, had outdoor pets, and so much more.
After our drive I thought about that. I was hung up on the “nature”
aspect of the outdoors, and not just the space of the outdoors. I have so many
memories with my sisters, cousin Stephanie, friends, and even frenemies,
outdoors. Through the lens of “play” I was able to connect more and more of my
childhood to that happening outside. This just goes to show how opportunities to any outdoor space can shift, cultivate and foster learning in a multitude of capacities, and as teacher, parents and community members, how can we provide that safely for our kids?
And some day, you should ask me about the “bread” story….
Comments
Post a Comment