OBN writing prompt - Childhood Outdoors

A recent writing prompt at the OBN was themed around children's outdoor experiences. There were a few options, one of which was either write about a memory of being exposed to the outdoors as a child, or write about exposing a child to the outdoors. My post will be two-fold, as I'd like to address both of those topics.

When I was growing up, my brother and I played outside, camped a lot, and spent a lot of time at parks and the beach. We didn't watch a lot of TV so being outdoors was a big part of our lives. Our family went camping (coastal Maine) every summer and it was the best part of our year - I think our first camping experience was when I was 3 or 4 and my brother was still a toddler. We were lucky to grow up in a nice apartment complex with lots of kids and a relatively large outdoor area to roam around and play in. There was woods, grass, and rocks to play on and in, and we had a great time. Beyond just spending time outside at and near home, two big trips I took during my childhood really helped shape my love of the outdoors.

The first of these was a cross-country train trip my family took when I was 13. My aunt and uncle lived in Portland, OR and my parents wanted us to see the country, so we took the train from Boston to Portland, then on the way home from LA back to Boston. The train trip was amazing (there and back), but once we got to Oregon it was even better. My aunt & uncle loved road tripping and the outdoors, so they took us to see a lot of things. We went to Mount Ranier, Mount St. Helens, Crater Lake, the Redwoods, and many other great places. It opened up a whole new world to me besides just woods and rocky beach, which was mostly what I got back home. The landscapes were just stunning, and so much more awe-inspiring than anything I'd seen before. That trip left me wanting more of the west, which I would get a year later.

(top: brother & I at Mount St. Helens, middle: Crater Lake National Park, bottom: me on the Oregon coast)

One year later, my eighth-grade class decided to go to Colorado and Utah for our trip. The trip included biking in Moab, doing a program with the Canyonlands Field Institute and whitewater rafting in Colorado. It was an outdoor enthusiast's dream! When we arrived in CO, we stayed in Grand Junction for one night and I was amazed at how beautiful it was, with the mountains towering over everything. Biking in Moab was awesome (although hot & I almost got heat stroke, lol), and the Canyonlands & Arches were indescribable. We were in Utah with the CFI for 4 or 5 days, then we did a 2-night (I think: could've been 3 nights) whitewater rafting trip down the Dolores river. In addition to contributing to my falling in love with the west, this trip kicked off my affair with whitewater rafting - I would go on to do a rafting trip in Maine once a summer for close to 10 years. I sadly do not have any photos from this trip scanned, but it was an amazing trip and I would love to move out to CO or UT someday if life allows it.

Now, my second part of this post, an experience exposing a child to the outdoors. My fiance has a younger brother who's 14, and we try to have him come up & visit us every summer. This past summer we took him canoeing at our favorite spot on the Ipswich river. We spent an entire afternoon on the river, paddling and fishing, and pulling off at Perkins island (not really an island) to have lunch. A couple things to know about my fiance's brother; he's a great kid, but has some issues and was mostly brought up by TV. He doesn't get outside much, if at all, and is kind of scarily obsessed with video games. When he's with us, he does express interest in camping, hiking, biking, fishing etc., but he gets none of that exposure at home. It's pretty rewarding to give him these experiences when he's with us (he lives out of state, by the way, so coming to see us is a big deal).

So, this recent trip while we were on the water at one point, we were floating along calmly & checking out an egret that was on the shore, and he said something to me along the lines of "this is really, like, nice you know, it's nice and calm and stuff? I like it." This is coming from a kid with ADD/ADHD, problems in school, no attention span, who's obsessed with video games and TV and wrestling. It made me SO HAPPY to hear him say that, and I told him. Made both the fiance and I feel really good that we're able to give him experiences like this. Oh, and I believe the fish he caught was his first, even though he claimed to have caught fish before.

If we're able to have him come visit this summer, we're going to take him somewhere to do a hike, I think he'd really like it. We may not be able to have him up this summer because of the wedding, but we're going to see. It's nice that he's older and still enthusiastic about doing things like this with us, instead of being a mopey teenager & wanting to stay inside.

I think being outdoors is an absolutely essential component of a good, physically-and-emotionally healthy childhood; I'm grateful for the experiences I had as a kid and happy we can provide a little of that to my future brother-in-law. We plan to raise our kids the same way I grew up: loving, respecting and enjoying the outdoors and being able to appreciate the wonders of nature.