The Gift of Nature

I have been reading a delightful book called Mitten Strings For God, by Katrina Kenison. It has been such a blessing for me to read over the last week. It makes you want to slow down and learn to enjoy the simple things in life and to teach those simple things to your kids. So I thought I'd share some of the principles in the book that stood out to me.

One of the chapters in the book that I loved, was called Secret Places. Children should be allowed to have a secret place. A place where they can be alone. A place to imagine and dream and to call their own. As the author puts it, hidden places beyone the realm and ken and comprehension of adults. Every child needs such a place, a place that invokes the processes of the imagination and the possbility of transformation. A place that is at once a haven from the adult world and a sourse of mystery and wonder, a place that a child can discover and shape and lay claim to, simply by virtue of his or her own quiet presence there, and deep observation.

I had such a place as a kid. It was on the other side of my neighbors home. We lived on two acres in GA and the trees were endless. We had a clubhouse that was really just a patch of trees inbetween two of the yards on the street. We wore all the grass out in that little circular patch of trees. We drug an old play kitchen in there. There were rooms to it and doorways. But it was all in our heads. No adult would have been able to see it. I had all boy neighbors, so I was always left in the clubhouse to tend to it and keep it clean, while the boys went off and got the bad guys or played war, or whatever else they did. I also made a place in the woods at the babysitters house where we stayed after school. We would line up rocks to show the perimeter of our space and then clean it out. We would drag books up there, or our toys, and would imagine all sorts of things. I loved my childhood outdoors.

There is also a chapter on Nature. Love it too. As the author puts it, any relationship requires time, lots of it. If a child is to truly love the natural world, to experience its beauty and truth and power at a spiritual level, he or she must first spend time in natural places. In the end, those who will make a real difference in our world-- those who will grow up with the confindence and the imagination to help save the earth-- will be those who know it well and love it deeply.

I've been thinking about this a lot over the last couple of months. As I drive up close to the foothills and see those big fancy homes with their perfectly manicured yards, I think to myself, what do their kids do in the yard. It lends itself to no imagination. The perfectly cut grass, the fine curbing, the flowers perfectly planted, and most importantly...no mature trees. As I see this it makes me ever so grateful for my mess of a backyard. There is a trail that runs along the other side of the river and as you walk down it,  you can tell our yard is the most wild and unkept, but you know what, I love it. We do keep up a portion of the yard up by the house, but the back, we just let it go. My kids have nature right in their backyard and that is rare here in Utah. And that is why we will probably never move from this spot. In fact, it's why we moved in the house in the first place. Nature is so acceccible to us, with our backyard, and then the mountains only minutes away. It's awesome.

Here is my kids' natural world.

 Nature tends to float right on in all the time.

This is the view from the other side of the bridge.

 These little guys have made our yard their home over the last week.

We have ducks all the time.

And a muskrat.

He's pretty cute. Kind of like a beaver...but with a rat's tail.

He swims in from the river and has made his home somewhere in our pond.

 We've even got our very own "Grandmother Willow."

(Although she kind of scares my kids)

I know Gabriela has a special spot up in her favorite apple tree.