Anyway, here goes. Attempt at blogging, take two.
Izaac and I went hiking the other day and I can hardly convey how excited I am about that! I have been waiting for something like 3 years to go hiking with my son and the best part is that he asked to go and loved being out on the trail and I can't think of anything better in the world then that! I get the impression, however, that he isn't picturing exactly the same thing as I am when he talks about hiking. This first became apparent when he said he wanted to "go hiking in the car". You mean you want to go in the car to go hiking? "No, I want to hike in the car". I'm not quite sure how that works. Its a bit more confined then I usually like, but then he is still pretty small so maybe it works for him. The second apparent divergence in our view of this recreational past time became obvious once we got to the trail head.
There's this place not to far from our house called McConnell's Mill State Park. It has quickly become one of my favorite places on earth. To get there you drive through all of this hilly, rolling farm land, take a sharp turn onto a steep decent and find yourself in a thickly wooded gorge full of massive rock outcroppings etched down the middle by the winding, picturesque Slippery Rock Creek. There are miles of trails that follow up and down the river and it is about as close to wilderness adventuring as I have much chance to get at this point in my life.
Anyway, Izaac and I get there, do a little "hiking in the car", which mostly looked to me like jumping back and forth over the back seat, and climbed down the make-shift stairs cut into the side of the ravine that leeds to the creek. As soon as we get far enough down to see the water through the trees, Izaac, almost frantic with excitement, starts begging to go throw stones. This isn't anything new to me. The most entertaining thing in the world for a two year old boy is, apparently, throwing anything with mass into anything liquid. So, we tossed a few stones and then I managed to convince him that we should walk for a while. With his attention temporarily bouncing manically between sticks and bugs and leaves and all manor of other amazingly curious things, we made it a ways down the trail before he stumbled (literally, in fact) upon a stone that absolutely, beyond any doubt and despite all reason, had to be thrown into, or at least toward, the quietly running stream. And of course, just like potato chips, one is never enough. Ten minutes later, I pried his suddenly vice-like attention off of his endless, yet exhilarating task and back onto the trail. As you might imagine, this scene repeated it self over and over until I finally gave up on my completely realistic ambition of hiking the six miles to my favorite spot to share some quite reflection and deep conversation with my two year old.
At that point I decided to dive whole-heartedly and passionately into my son's vision of what hiking should be. We found the rockiest place right on the creek so we could throw stones and get wet and yell hello to kayakers and go nowhere and never reach any other "destination". In the end, we did very little "hiking" but we threw a lot of stones and had a ton of fun and, really, is walking down a trail and then turning around and walking back that much more beneficial then throwing stones?
