Take a Hike...With Me
I have a confession to make. Nature study may have been the thing that attracted me to Charlotte Mason’s philosophies 10 years ago, but I have recently strayed from my first love. It wasn’t intentional. I like to blame the pandemic. But the truth is, my habits changed during the pandemic (exacerbated by an ankle injury that kept me from too much walking), and I neglected my nature study habit. I have decided that this will be the year that I emerge from my “pandemic cloud” as I’ve been calling it. A year to return to better habits, to first loves. So I am inviting you on this journey with me. I want you to take a hike…with me.
My first hike of the new year was a short, familiar trail. My kids and I met up with a couple of families from our homeschool group. We’ve been meeting for years for nature study, but in the last couple of years I’d become far more interested in chatting with the moms than doing any nature study. This day was no different. We arrived at our local vernal pond. I made note of the height of the water — higher than I’d ever seen due to our recent abundance of rainfall in California. I kept my eyes glued to the preschoolers to make sure no one fell in. I commanded the children at least two dozen times to back away from the muddy shore lest they fall in and ruin the morning for us all. I yelled at a group wandering too far away to stay within eyesight. I was mostly concerned with keeping everyone alive. I failed to notice a great many things…but more on that later.
After some lovely chit-chat and gathering of the children, we decided to walk down the trail and see what we could see. As I walked, I admonished the children to side-step the mud puddles, to stay on the trail, to stop screaming, etc., all while trying to maintain my ongoing conversation with the moms.
Soon we rounded the first bend in the trail. At this point, half of the children bounded ahead out of sight, and some of the children remained behind, poking along the trail so that we could no longer see them. I’m sure you can imagine how I wanted to respond. But at that moment, my friend Gretchen asked, “Is this a manzanita tree?” I glanced over my shoulder and said, “yup!” I again prepared to call out to the children when Gretchen, a gentle soul, quietly said, “Aren’t they beautiful?”
I stopped. I had been on this trail many times. In fact, the first time I identified a manzanita tree was right here, on this very trail. It could very well have been this exact tree. I remember being surprised by its beauty then. When was the last time I’d stopped and given way to wonder?
I turned and looked at the tree. “You’re right. It is beautiful.” The bark, a smooth shade of red entirely unique to itself, twists and turns almost as if it is made of plastic. Here and there a more traditional looking brown bark peeks out. Why does it do that? Gretchen asked when the tree produces flowers. I realized that though I had often admired the tree, I’d never taken true note of the flowers. I wasn’t sure, so I looked more closely and saw some small flowers at the top of one tree. From that distance, the small, pinkish-white, bell-shaped flowers almost looked like wilted leaves. I wouldn’t have noticed them without really looking. We decided to look for more. We found some small bunches and wondered aloud how pretty the tree must look when it is in full bloom. Given the state of the blossoms, perhaps we had missed seeing it in bloom. At that suggestion the moms looked underfoot. Lo and behold, we had been walking along a carpet of fallen flowers. They were shriveled and brown, so at a quick glance they just looked like leaf litter. But that entire time the trail was strewn with the remnants of what must have been a glorious, yet hasty, blossoming of this small manzanita grove. We had just missed it.
While I was sad to have missed the trees in full blossom, I was grateful for the moment to stop and see. The path of wilted flowers was a stark reminder — If we do not take the time to see, to wonder, to ask, to revel in God’s creation, we will miss the gift right before us. The opportunity might come again, but if I am not in the habit of looking, I may miss it once more. I have missed a lot over the past three years as I allowed my habits to succumb to my own version of pandemic apathy. Things that used to delight me had become unremarkable. But there is nothing mundane about the privilege a Charlotte Mason lifestyle affords me. And it is good to be reminded of this.
I wish I could say that I spent the rest of that hike in quiet awe of nature-y things. But the 4-year-old kept wandering off. I did however snap a picture of the bright blue sky reflected in the vernal pond as we headed for home, so I can remember that, despite the need to distribute snacks to hungry souls, there is always time to wonder.
Sarah Jonnalagadda 2023
Sounds like a wonderful hike. I was just reflecting on our daily walking habit in another substack that discussed our need to connect to our surroundings. We lived in a very incredibly boring suburb for15 years. It was actually at the very bottom of the list of places where I would want to live, but it is where our extended family lived. We decided it was important to be close to family.
So for 15 years I made a point of daily walking through this grey, drab neighbourhood, my children in tow, finding little niches to explore. We built rock fortresses in the water catchment area, we traipsed along the creek that separated two subdivisions running boats along it, we walked the broad, boring street to the grocery store, we got to know the small woodlot across from us like the back of our hand. The place where we lived was admittedly quite ugly in its uniformity and lack of natural beauty. Yet, when we return to it now, the children still remember their connection and wonder to this place because they had walked it thousands of times.
This experience give me hope that our conviction and dedication to a neighbourhood, no matter how plain or removed from nature, can still ground us in reality.