Inherit

Introducing my children to the natural world is one of my favorite things about parenthood.

"Look at that!" I shout to my kids in the backseat as a threesome of dusty gold and cream colored cranes sprint across the road. I didn't even know cranes could run. They are huge birds and with their thin, knobby legs and wide wings fanned out beside them they look like dinosaurs in skinny jeans. I catch myself pulling to the side of the road, grinning like a goon as I watch the cranes disappear in the reeds.

"Whoa." I hear my kids breathe appreciatively behind me.

I sometimes worry my overt enthusiasm for nature will burden my children with never intended but still felt expectations to match my love of it it. My kids very often hear me fawning over the sunset or the color of flower petals.

My own relationship with the earth has evolved in recent years. I've always loved the outdoors but lately my enthusiasm for nature has multiplied. My only guess is that it has something to do with the fact that I now live in the most beautiful corner of the world. Our home sits atop a mountain that overlooks a river and forest. The local wildlife, like elk and wild turkeys are regular visitors in our yard. Every summer the meadow we live in bursts with wildflowers. It's my idea of heaven.

"There are a whole lot of things in this world of ours you haven't stated wondering about yet." -Roald Dahl, James and the Giant Peach.

Still, the intensity of this love has taken me by surprise. Like the quote above mentions, I find there are many doors to the world and the more I wonder, the more I question, the sooner another door appears to me. I have been asking nature a lot of questions lately.

"Nature conceals her mystery by means of her essential grandeur, not by her cunning."

-Alfred Einstein

Nature has always had a strange hold over me. I remember as a child finding a cool patch of clovers behind our property and laying under them for an hour in inexplicable euphoria. I played in and wrote stories in treetops. When I had my heart broken in my early twenties I had this gnawing, inexplicable desire to hug the mountains, as if I could be absorbed into the mountain, become a part of it and lose all feelings of sadness. My husband and I were sitting in a sleepy river when we got engaged.

"Mountains are giant, restful, absorbent. You can heave your spirit into a mountain and the mountain will keep it, folded, and not throw it back as some creeks will. The creeks are the world with all its stimulus and beauty; I live there. But the mountains are home."

-Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

There are things so special and important it is your duty to share them. Nature is a duty to me. You pray your children grow to love it too. You hand them your squishy, unprotected heart on a tray. "Inherit this fondness, this love I have. It will bless you." you silently pray to them. You wait.

I want to give my children a love for the natural earth in the hopes to see appreciation and wonder in their eyes. I feel that if I see that then I'll know they will be okay. A person who can appreciate life in all its forms will always be in good shape.

I know this because I have experienced it. Nature has been a balm for me during broken hearts and broken minds. It's been a delight, when picking baskets of flowers with my daughter or watching my sons infant hands grasp eagerly at blades of grass. I hear God's voice when I am immersed in nature. How could I not share it with my kids?

Yet there is something even more than this. We share a common ancestry with nature. The same materials of matter that created trees formed us. We come from the same ingredients and the same Creator. We are the living of this earth. We give one another life. In a very real sense, we are family.

Every family passes down things to inherit: a home, money, blue eyes, weak chins, fast legs, a positive outlook, a negative point of view. Each generation of man and earth are given to each other. The world isn't something we decide to accept or not. We inherit it. It is ours.

"Service is the rent we pay for the privilege of living on this earth."

-N. Eldon Tanner

I am no nature expert, a novice at best, nor am I great example at loving all creatures. My hatred of snakes may keep me out of heaven. The point is to appreciate. Appreciate and wonder. As soon as you wonder, you no longer take things for granted, like I did for years. Once wonder and curiosity take over, the world opens up in unexpected ways. I want so badly to give my children that. I know it cannot be forced, but I also know children are professionals when it comes to wonder and curiosity.

I'm finding just giving them time in nature is enough to spark that interest. It doesn't take much. If you don't believe me, ask a child to look at the clouds and tell you what they see. Then try and get them to stop talking about it. Children really do naturally love nature. They belong to it, as wild and pure as hawks or desert stone.

A few months ago I decided to pick wildflowers. I asked my son if he wanted to join me. I actually wanted to be alone so I could cool off from a recent encounter with him but a nagging voice persisted that I ask him along. We hadn't been getting along, at odds over any and every thing-we pushed each others buttons, whether intentional or not. I hoped a walk together might smooth the edges. I was disappointed when he told me no but began my walk anyway. A few steps in I turn around to see him following me.

I don't what it was that made him change his mind. Was it out of boredom or was the tantalizing call of the wild too much? He held my growing bouquet for me when I stooped down to pick more flowers. He told me all sorts of things about lizards. He shot off to a grove of tress to see if any turkeys where hiding there, leaving us both giggling.

We shared the afternoon in sunshine, bonded over wilderness.The sublime diversions of nature were enough to help us let go the unessential. I'm unsure if the afternoon meant much to him but it meant the world to me. I felt I got my son back. Not because he had finally subjected himself to my will but because we forsook our wills for each other instead. Sharing the outdoors with him was better than having it to myself. Sharing the earth with him opened new doors to greater treasures. And as we are told, the meek shall inherit the earth.

The Age of Green

I. Even when my mind is hiding

green knows how to find me.

When I finally see summer's edge

after winter's hostages are freed again,

like land sighted after a storm

I raise myself up and cry to the beeches

"Here is home!"

II. During the age of green,

in the fields beside my house,

my children grow.

Petals in colors so rare they have no name

grow beside them.

-Natasha Haught Fudge

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