Room to err

This morning as I sat in my usual chair drinking my usual coffee I heard a most unusual flapping and splashing. Last night we had watched as one of the baby robins left the nest under our deck and tried his wings rather clumsily in the wide outer world and I thought to myself at the time what a good thing it was that he had not fallen in the kiddie pool just outside the window, but I didn't empty the pool, so when I heard the quiet splashing this morning I knew what had happened and the words that escaped my lips as I dashed out the back door are probably not to be repeated in kind company.

Rescuing that precious baby was not as hard as I thought. The pool being close to the wood pile I just reached over for a board, gently pushed it under his struggling feet, and lifted him safely out onto the ground. I left him in the sunshine and watched him from the window, at first shivering, then eventually calling to his parents, who showed up with breakfast. Calvin had watched the rescue from the window, and we both went through the day with a feeling of exuberance over this deed done for babies (our babies because they have lived under our deck, after all).

I didn't bother the baby with the camera at the time of the incident—enough trauma is enough—but he returned to the deck later in the evening. As soon as he'd hopped off this morning I'd emptied the pool, so drowning was no longer a concern, but the parents were now worried about our physical presence and as we rounded up toys from the yard she sat on our feeder hook and chipped at us to let us know she meant about as much business as a mama robin can mean.

Mothering is a tough job. From the moment children are born, be they robins or humans, they are preparing to leave the nest. You feed them and clothe them and try to keep them safe, but your job is to keep strangers at bay while they learn to fly, and fail, and try again; Your job is to bandage the knees, not to stop them from falling while they learn to run or ride a bike. That mother robin knew that. She knew that her job was to trust her baby to learn. It's part of her instinct.

Tonight we took a family walk and stopped by the park. Following the rain that finally relieved our parched grounds the air was cooler and less oppressive, and the sun was just peaking from around the retreating storm clouds. In the park Calvin gained the new skill of sliding down the fire pole without assistance. Watching from the sidelines is hard. Jon was there to help, but from a respectful two steps away, and I could see his arm muscles flex every time Calvin's feet left the structure and swung out into space to grab the pole (and my own arms jumped each time, too). Jon was ready to help if needed, but he was trusting the boy to know his own limitations, to learn the skill on his own. I think he is so much better at stepping back than I am. 

Jon and I have always tried to base our parenting and teaching philosophy on trust. We give Calvin choices and allow him to make decisions, giving him room to celebrate the good ones and learn from the bad ones. But it's not always easy. Assessing physical situations or dangers and providing appropriate support is one thing, but non-physical situations are more difficult to judge. Lately I feel like, when I give him choices, I end up pressuring him toward the one that I think is clearly right, and that is not environment I want to create for him. I need to provide support from one more step back, giving him room to err or to triumph and the space in which to assess things for himself. Like the mother robin I need to trust that learning and growing is entirely natural, and so are mistakes.

A little bit of weekend nature

Great Spangled Fritillary in our garden

Baby robins under the deck Saturday...

...and then on the deck Sunday

Someone ate the tops off all the bean plants (and left us the beans)

But the tomatoes are coming in

And all the lillies are in full bloom

Nature Thursdays—Wildlife detectives at Rolling Hills

Back on the trails again. Today's Thursday program with our county parks and recreation was a bigger hike than usual, and maybe it was the half hour drive that scared away the rest of the regulars, but Calvin and I were actually the only ones there. Funny, because turtles are cool, and logs are cool, but I really thought the "detective" part of today's program title would bring kids out of the woodwork.

A private class was okay with us, though, because when you're out scanning the ground for tracks and other signs of animals, and when you have to talk about things like scat and owl pellets, the smaller the crowd the better (and the larger the crowd, the more "ewwwwws" there are to be had). Calvin is comfortable with both scat and owl pellets, but we found only the former, and mostly from deer. Really the class was a bit like preaching to the choir. Calvin and I have been hiking our fields looking for exactly these same clues for years now. In fact, of the three of us, he was the one who found and identified the raccoon tracks and the deer scat. I also found mole trails, a couple of snake holes, and lots of duck tracks. We found nests, both bird and squirrel, and some gnawed crab apples and acorns. It was a thoroughly enjoyable private event.

Identifying a mole's trail and hole

Checking out pond scum

After our favorite guide left we ate lunch and took our now customary hike. Jon and I had hiked many of the trails at Rolling Hills about four years ago with Calvin in the Kelty pack, but I haven't been there since and I had forgotten how nice the foot trails are—lots of deep woods and wildflowers and some views of the little pond. We found lots of dragonflies and butterflies, identified a few trees and their lichens, counted fungus groups, and scared more than a few squirrels and birds.

Hitting the trails after lunch

Dragonfly and damselfly

Catbird mewing (they really do mew)

My favorite part of the day was right at the end: as we turned a corner there was a lot of rustling in the ground leaves near us and suddenly the strangest looking, most clumsy flying bird took off and flew right across the path in front of us. I was too dumbfounded to handle the camera properly before he was gone, but it was most assuredly a woodcock, something I have seen only in bird books. Calvin swears he looked just like an overgrown bumble bee, which I think was in reference to its strange, butt-heavy flying—and he laughed about it for the rest of the way back to the car. I was just ecstatic over seeing a new bird. Even a clumsy one.

Nature Thursdays—life in logs at County Farm Park

I now know the difference between a millipede and a centipede. It's not knowledge I coveted, but if I'd really minded I would not have taken Calvin to the "living world inside a log" Nature Thursdays program today. Or I might have, but I would have quietly watched from a few paces away instead of actually touching all the multi-legged inhabitants we discovered in the logs that are in the process of returning themselves to the earth. What I would not have done, however, is tiptoe through the forest and screech every time a bug was mentioned as being nearby, or threaten his head if he so much as thought of bringing such "creepy crawlies anywhere near me". We actually had one of those on this trip. I think the guide almost asked her to leave.

In the quieter moments, when we got a bit away from the 20+ kids and their parents, some more squeamish than others, we found some pretty great things. Like an inch worm, a millipede, a cabbage white butterfly flitting through the dappled sunlight, and a plethora of daddy longlegs. We saw red squirrels and one rabbit. We even spotted a Flicker woodpecker, along with scads of other birds. Like last time, at the end of the program Calvin and I picked a spot for lunch, then headed back into the woods for our own quieter, calmer hike. We found a creek, which was clearly swollen past its banks but a month ago and is now down to a surprising trickle. We found a meadow that was teeming with butterflies and dragonflies and beautiful wild blooms. We found more squirrels, more birds, and a great hunger for more days just like today. We sketched nature, and we talked about it. Though a month ago I complained about the unceasing rains, and lately I've been begging the skies for more of it, the warm, sunny weather with the cool, dry breezes has been a perfect joy.

We finished our nature day with a stop at the park of my childhood. Slide hair and a beautiful, ancient tree, bathing in warm afternoon sunlight and calm, joyous laughter.

Nature Thursdays—turtles at Independence Lake

We are fortunate to have a really wonderful naturalist with our County Parks and Recreation. We've done several hikes and other presentations with her in the past, and this summer she is offering Kids' Nature Thursdays in which she will cover a different topic at a different park each week. I knew that it would be a lovely program because I know she's great with kids in the way that I like people to be great with kids—by talking to them as equals and giving them respect and space in which to learn. Today was the first of the summer Thursdays, an hour all about turtles. We touched shells we learned some facts, we played with a couple captives, we went looking for the real things in the lake, and we scouted out some nests, finding two in tact (and putting protection over them) and many that had fallen victim to raccoons (which allowed us to come home with shells, and I had forgotten how rubbery they are, not at all like chicken eggs, something Calvin noticed right away).

I learned today that the snapping turtle, unlike most others, has very little shell on his underside, which means he has to be more aggressive and ornery. I learned that my son already knew that, and what a reptile was, and what it meant to be cold blooded. He'd been reading up, unbeknownst to me, in preparation for today's session. I think that was my favorite new bit of knowledge for the day.

Then, being already at the park I figured that Thursdays would be a great time to get Calvin out hiking on his own two feet. He's been out many times before, of course, but really only in the backpack. Today he and I did a mile trail through the wetlands after turtle appreciation hour. We took lunch and ate it sitting atop the lookout, where we promptly got lightly rained on, but to no ill effect. So the weather was iffy at best, we had a great time anyhow.

We identified milkweed, poison ivy, yarrow, and a number of trees. We also saw many butterfly species, including the cabbage white, lady skippers, spring azure, and peck's skipper. Calvin is pretty good with the cabbage white (and a number of other butterflies that visit our own yard regularly), and he knows most of the plants already, but we took some laminated identifying pamphlets with us for fun.

Rain and all, it was a great afternoon, and Calvin is really excited about what I have dubbed "nature day" next Thrusday. He's also asked to go on another hike this weekend, and with the cooler weather it seems like a great time to explore another local path. We'll continue breaking him in on increasingly long trails as the summer progresses. I have images of us hiking into rustic camping already!

My only disappoint from the trip was that, after getting a-hold of nature journals and remembering to pack both them and colored pencils, it was too wet to get them out. When we got home, though, Calvin was quick to jump at the opportunity. So these are not nature illustrations the way that I had them in mind, with the two of us sitting and sketching what we see (and oh, how often will it occur that I imagine an event one way but have to be content with another outcome), but they are his impressions of our hike today. The first is his sketch of us eating lunch on top of a wooden lookout. The second is his sketch of the trail as seen from above. And then, of course, the jounral entry. I was surprised that he didn't add a picture to this as well, but if he does so in the future I will come back and add it.

I linked this post to share at Saturday's Artist.