Part 3: Creating a Sense of Place at Beus Pond
Exploring together, we continue to walk the trail at Beus pond, stopping when we see a squirrel on a largish box elder just off of the path. The little gray rodent is quick – quicker than my noisy little toddler, who just misses seeing it as he stumble-runs up to the old grey trunk. The tree is ringed by the not-so-natural bird feeder boxes that the squirrel has probably been raiding for sunflower seeds, and Jack is interested, of course, in raiding them too.
My kids are strangely silent as we move about – something I can’t say for someone else’s ten-year-olds who are playing some version of duck pond NASCAR on bicycles. My boys' silence is less critical and romantic than my own, however. There doesn’t seem to be any conscious reverence implied by their silence, there is simply a lot to see, and they are looking.
I, by extension, am interested in looking at them. I want to know what they think about everything, and sometimes I ask. “Where do you think the water is coming from?” I inquire as we find a little concrete culvert that carries water to the pond from some spring or other. The boys immediately find its outlet and begin throwing leaves and sticks – anything that will float – into the slow-moving stream of clear water. We narrowly avoid testing Jack’s ability to float before I catch him by the tail of his little red pullover and drag him further up on the edge of the channel. I am hesitant to restrict these guys too much on this little trip, but Mom would definitely prefer that everybody comes home more or less dry.
We soon find a place to sit on a bench conveniently located near the water. I try to identify as many of the ducks as I can, and Will and I talk about our favorites while Jack listens and points. We agree that the wood duck is the most interesting, the mallard, the most common, and since we have seen only one, a little black duck that we can’t identify is our favorite today. I am again amazed at the attention my guys are giving this living show on the water. They are quietly listening to the ebullient ducks with a level of concentration I haven’t ever seen them give to one of Diego’s talking friends.
Another family, not unexpected, comes to join us with their bags of bread. Mom, Dad, two girls and a boy begin to toss chunks and crumbs at the surface of the pond, luring all birds in the immediate area from whatever else they might have been doing. “Mom” offers us some slices of “Great Harvest” – a peace offering, I suppose, for invading the area of our bench. We thank them, but we still have some of our own. Within moments, the waterfowl feeding frenzy attracts several other duck wranglers who begin to encroach upon our coveted position. We quietly slip away and move farther along the trail.
As they walk the boys don’t stay on the asphalt trail. They ramble. A leaf-covered hillside has them climbing away from the pond and then suddenly it’s around the tree and back to the mud. They dart here for a stick and there for a rock, feathers and leaves directing their journey while I stay, for the most part, on the hard black-top trail.
Jack’s path is the widest – the wildest – and as I watch him, I realize that his care-free trail isn't the kind of path his father would take through nature. I am suddenly keenly aware of the differences in the types of natural experiences my boys and I are having. I have been trying to ascribe a broad meaning to our experience while Will and Jack seem interested in following up on every single detail that catches their eyes.
I am aware of the general, woody smell of the leaf mold, the view of the tightly packed stands of reeds that span the pond, and the unsightly architecturally-pleasing houses that stick up over the mountainside edge of the little park's tree line. I take it all in at a single pass, while Will and Jack are more interested in finding out how many of the pebbles and twigs they can shove into the hole of a burned-out log.
The differences in our points of view are significant in their scale. As Gary Paul Nabhan observes in his book, The Geography of Childhood, “a few intimate places mean more to [children]...than all the glorious panoramas I could ever show them” (7). I realize that I have been going about this all wrong. I don't need to introduce my kids to nature, they and nature already know each other. I just need to keep them acquainted by providing opportunities to find and connect to "place." I've been waiting for special occasions, when simple occasions would do. Jack finds place in his mother's cherry tomato plants, one mouthful at a time. Will finds place banging sticks against...well, just against things. Both find place, after all, on the slide of the expensive new clubhouse. And again as we sit, occasionally, on the couch, not actually helping Diego save roadrunners and armadillos. Maybe I don't have to worry that we're not getting out enough. They're getting enough when we do get out. They already know how to do it. And whatever they get out of it, I'm just happy to be nearby when we can do it together.
Together we take another trip around Beus pond before stopping, where the ducks are, to give them our required offerings of bread –wild creatures, indeed. Remembering my own childhood experiences, I hold a piece of bread bravely between thumb and forefinger and offer it to a single Canada goose in the vanguard. With barely a nip, he takes it and steps back to swallow it down with a toss of his head. Will tries the bread trick once, but the rough beak snap he gets has him preferring to toss the crumbs from a safer distance up the shore. Little Jack however, only as big as the geese himself, wanders with fists full of manna among the quacking and honking throng, heedless of questing beaks, a kindred, waddling, creature.
A bold and age-grizzled grey goose approaches me. From my crouching position, she seems as big as a rottweiler. I bravely stand my ground with the bread in hand until – not so gracefully – I too am forced to drop the crumbs and jump away from the hissing matron of the lake. So much for personification, Will. I’ll have to call this one “not nice.”
“I like this place,” says Will. So do I. And "place" is what we are creating, whether at home or in slightly wilder places. We’ll come again.
Works Cited
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