Hi friends!
I grew up on a small farm in eastern South Dakota. We didn’t have cable television, or a lot of toys. But we had 480 acres to explore that consisted of shelter belts, a creek with cattails and frogs and birds, nesting geese in the Spring, pastures with tall grasses and thistles and snakes, cornfields, gardens, and a dugout that turned into an ice skating rink in the winter. Looking back, it was a paradise.
And that was just the way life was growing up. My parents were not trying to be “screen free” or “free-range” parents. That was just normal parenting for them and a normal childhood for my brothers and me. Now that I’m a parent to two young boys (ages 1.5 and 3.5), I want them to also see the outdoors and our natural world as a paradise.
When I started a PhD program in Geography (pre-kids), I always thought I would go into teaching. Teaching college students about our beautiful, messy, complex world. Teaching them to look around and ask questions about what they see. Well, then I had kids and we decided that for now, we cannot imagine leaving the community we live in. So for the past year, my focus has been to walk alongside our two boys as they explore our beautiful, messy, complex world.
Although the content may be different (I’m not teaching my kids about ethnic conflicts in Ukraine), in some ways, the approach is similar. It’s about helping them ask questions about the world we live in and letting them explore their interests.
This blog is about our adventures and experiences outside, what we learn, the questions we ask, and the benefit we all receive when we spend time outside playing. Join us as we take in the beautiful mysterious complex creations we get to explore and learn from and learn about everyday.
I also hope this website can be a resource for parents to young ones in and around Helena, Montana. There are so many outdoor opportunities in our community, so I will be sharing the ones we know about, and I hope we can all learn more from you!
A note about the title of this blog:
Being outside does not have to be stressful, full of planned activities, or worrying about doing the perfect “thing” or teaching in depth science lessons. I would love for you to join me as my boys and I are just us. Just being us while we explore our environments. Being in tune with our surroundings and the creations around us. No big agenda. No peak we have to summit. Just being who we were created to be, and letting our interests and skills and temperaments guide us rather than playing the comparison game with others’ adventures. “Just being” is about being present where we are at, both on the trail and in life.
Join us and share with us as places become a part of each of us that will remain with us throughout life no matter where we travel or live. What a gift that we get by just being outside.
In The Sense of Wonder, Rachel Carson wrote about the value of exploring the natural world:
“Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of the birds, the ebb and flow of the tides, the folded bud ready for the spring. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature – the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.”
What we experience by just being outside provides benefits that last a lifetime. And childhood is a perfect place to accrue memories and have places become an inseparable part of us and shape who we become.
As we explore and spend time outside, I hope to encourage my boys to have “a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life” (Rachel Carson’s The Sense of Wonder). If in the process, we can help inspire others, all the better.
Thanks for visiting, and I hope you will stick around. I look forward to learning from you and hearing about your big and micro outdoor adventures!
See you outside!
Linnea