Last weekend my kids—Blaizon (age 6) and Arianna (age 5)—and I packed up and went for a two day outing with my brother, Ron, his fiancée, Gilma, and her seven-year-old son, Danny.  Ron and I had not spoken to each other for six months owing to some hurt feelings over an altercation that we had the last time we all took a trip together. It was time to put all of that behind us and, besides, my kids had been complaining that they never got to see Danny, and I was running out of honest excuses to give them. Members of my family had also been putting pressure on me to patch things up with Ron.  The funny thing is, Ron and I really never spoke about why we didn’t speak, and we still haven’t spoken about not speaking.

To some extent, my family overemphasized the apparent problem, and they naturally felt disturbed by my reluctance to communicate with Ron, and vice versa.  When it came up, I gave my analysis, and from their reports I gathered that he did the same. Both Ron and I, however, maintained that the issue needed very little else but time.

Families work like little ecosystems, with many threads of causality all strung between the different agents of influence.  There are dominant life forms, geographic factors, dynamic interplays, and balancing forces. When something is out of whack, the system suffers and, like natural systems, restoration (or a new balance) is often just a matter of time.

The arrangements for our outing were made via email, and I didn’t actually speak to Ron until we had reached our rendezvous point at the Caney Fork River in eastern Tennessee. We met up at a canoe rental facility and proceeded from there to the river.  With kids in tow and exploration at hand, there was neither opportunity nor impetus for conciliatory dialogue. We all took to the river and went with the flow.

Eastern Tennessee is a rolling landscape covered in impenetrable greenery. Before Europeans breached this terrain with axes then bulldozers, the only parting force of any consequence to the dense stands of oak, maple, and buckeye was water.  The age of the Caney Fork watercourse was obvious to me—what with the deep cuts through Paleozoic limestone—but to most of the river-goers that flowing corridor was just a beauty to the eye. 

Visual splendor is quite an interesting psychological phenomenon. We seem primed to experience natural scenery as pleasurable, with its fractal patterns, asymmetries, and irregularities.  A river flanked by rocky cliffs is an attraction no less delightful to someone with an average knowledge of Nature’s complexity than it is to an avid naturalist.  It’s as if there is really only one dimension to experiential gratification encompassing many depths of appreciation.

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Nature Based Family Values
written by Soapy, December 18, 2008

This is an absolutely delicious "sense of place" piece!

I'm tickled that kids got so into the moment. I might even have to do some winter seining just to keep up

Think of the potential joy we steal from kids when we don't give them opportunities to get dirty on their own volition. This MudMomma is smilin'....

We should find a way to connect with Richard Louv's Last Child in the Woods. You know he's from Olathe? Weird how things work out sometimes....

Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder has spurred a national dialogue among educators, health professionals, parents, developers and conservationists. This is a book that will change the way you think about your future and the future of your children. http://richardlouv.com/last-child-woods

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