Hiking for paw paws

I had no idea what a wild paw paw was before today, but it was a hike to look for exactly those crazy fruits that was led by our county parks naturalists this morning. The weather was fabulous, the colors were just starting to come out, so we decided to drive the half hour south to join in the looking.

We'd never been to this particular wildlife preserve before today. Being a preserve, as opposed to a park, it is very wonderfully wild, and there was something very Jungle-Book-esque fabulous about hiking through undergrowth and mud and shaking trees while protecting your head in case of dropping paw paws. We actually didn't find any on the trees. Our guide said it was likely someone had already come through and harvested them, seeing as that it's public land, but we weren't entirely disappointed because, after shaking tree after tree, we were still rewarded with a taste of a nearby farmer's paw paws, and some Zingerman's Creamery Paw Paw Gelato brought by our wonderful guide.

Plus it's hard to be disappointed by a hike that, although not productive as far as fruit goes, produced much in the way of wildlife. We saw lots of animal houses—crayfish, woodchuck, snake, raccoon?—plus several wood frogs, a flicker, two praying mantises, a snail, and skippers, butterflies, bees, yadda yadda. We tried wild berries and roots, and identified a variety of native plants and trees, some of which had been stumping me for a while.

These programs are mainly designed for adults: a few miles, lots of climbing in and out of scrubby and wet areas, lots of quiet listening, looking, appreciating, and discussing. The children's programs are shorter and less physically demanding, plus they usually come with stickers and coloring pages, but Calvin enjoys both equally as well. We've been taking him on the adult hikes for about two years now, carrying him when he was still too small, but making sure that he was part of the event. To us nature is interesting for itself, not for the coloring pages, and we've wanted to share that wonder and awe with our son from day one and have included him accordingly. I will never get tired of the looks we get from some adult hikers when we show up for these events with our pint-sized hiker, and then their utter amazement when they realize that not only is he up to the challenge, he usually knows almost as much as they do about the natural world around him.

In his words:

Nature Thursdays—hiking Dolph Park

The county parks Nature Thursdays program is over, but we did nature today, and it's Thursday, so...

Beautiful weather called us outside. We did the usual first, like vacuuming, laundry, straightening, some math, lots of reading, and a little piano, but the afternoon was meant to be spent outside, and that's where we went.

There are several parks in the area that we intended to explore this summer, but heat and other activities got in our way, so we are exploring them this fall instead. We stuck relatively close to home today, stopping by after running errands and only an hour or so before time to get dinner going, and spent an hour exploring trails right in the city. The last time I hiked this location was when Calvin was only a year or so old; he was riding in the backpack, and we found a fawn hidden by his mother in the dappled sunlight under the trees. Magical. Today we saw swans, dragonflies, and plenty of mosquitoes that made me glad for the long clothing and bug spray. Calvin's nature eyes are getting more practiced and he found two snakes and several patches of fungus all by himself. Our only disappointment was a lack of frogs, but two snakes just about make up for it.

Hiking for nuts

The autumnal equinox has come and gone. The garden is done growing (I wish the grass would do the same), the fall colors are starting to come out, and most of the week has been dark and rainy. That's fall, and I love it. This is one of the best times to go hiking. Spring is good, too—when nature is twitterpated and busy, and signs of life can be heard and seen throughout the forest—but fall, with its rich colors and warming scents, is also inviting.  The insects are busier in the fall, and there is more nature to collect, like nuts and seeds and fallen leaves.

Having just ditched the sniffles of a cold, and seeing the sky brighten between showers, we took the risk of getting wet and set out for the field near our house, collecting "basket" in hand. Calvin calls the open nature area there the deer field because we find so much of them there—tracks, scat, and bedded areas. It's really just an undeveloped part of our subdivision, and with the housing market being what it is right now I'm hoping it stays that way. Having the completely uncultivated area just a neighborhood block away—open field for hiking, forest for looking, boggy areas for listening—has really been a treat. 

This trip wasn't as rewarding as most. With all the rain and with the grass still being high we found only two deer tracks today. But we counted a multitude of hues in the flora, and discovered other signs of fauna in the several obliterated nut shells we found along the path. Someone found a bounty. The catbird was a noisy companion on this trip. Calvin remembers seeing her on our paved footpath this past spring, but we can't recall ever noticing her before this year. I wonder if she is new to our area, or if we are just paying closer attention than in the past. There are many things that have previously escaped our notice and have only recently become known to us. That is the beauty of discovery.

In the end we had to cut our hike short upon the arrival of the showers that had been threatening all day. We fled the deep meadow, jumping over the puddles we had gingerly stepped around on our way in, forgetting to notice the deepening of the colors on our way out, and jogging the final block to the cozy, dry refuge of our own home. Then on to the next experience, good old kitchen science and some demonstrations of matter.

Then Demonstrations of matter

Non sequitur?

Meet our oddly metallic purple and blue jumping spider. He was tiny and cute and very happy in our garden. Five years ago I would have rapidly fled the scene, but yesterday I used my own (gloved) hand to carefully coax him into a cup so we could get some pictures. This makes me happy.

And on an unrelated note, but entirely worth mentioning, about seven months ago Calvin became determined to play Monopoloy. At the time he knew his numbers, but we hadn't spent any time on math as a subject because it hadn't held much interest. The frustration of Monopoly without prior arithmetic sparked that interest and got us trying Math-U-See, which has served us well in its own way. Now, seven months later, Monopoly has made a comeback, and to drastically different results. The learning wasn't a rush—it was all on his own schedule, and of his desire and determination, and he is pleased with the results, or maybe he just takes them for granted. That warms my heart.

That is to say...life is going well.

Oh no! The tomatoes!

There is an exuberant energy that comes with learning something new. Upon grasping a grand new concept or coming to the end of a good book sometimes I just want to get up and run around the house to burn off the sudden vibrations running through my whole body. I see this in Calvin, too, but often when he's that excited all it does is make me feel tired. I must be getting old.

The sudden dances of joy today were frequent and bright. For starters, any science activity that involves water and dye is pretty massively exciting. And there was an Amazon delivery today. That's like Christmas come early! A science non-curriculum book for me, Prehistoric coloring books for Calvin, and a new game for us all. We try to pick up new games every so often and the new addition today was Shut the Box, something that we're addicted to already. Who said math had to be boring.

Math-U-See is going well for us still, although I'm frustrated that they provide no extra practice sheets. I've been searching out some pretty good free sites for printing practice pages, mostly clocks from this site, and dinosaur addition color by number pages from Enchanted Learning. If only I could find the Burgess Shale color by addition page I'd be all set.

And a walk outside later in the day. Actually we've been tied up in the house quite a bit the past two days with the sniffles. We even missed this afternoon's homeschool gathering at the park in order to get some extra rest. We have tickets to tomorrow's game and I want us all to be well enough to go and enjoy it. But with so few outside days remaining we had to get out for at least a little of this one, which foiled this little bugger's plan of eating our tomato plants right down to the ground. He was sleeping so we snipped off the branch he was on and dropped him in a box to observe for a few hours before taking him over to the field and dropping him off. I just couldn't kill him, but I really hope he doesn't find his way back.