I read this section in Scott Russell Sanders’ Writing From The Center recently and was inspired to hike up Old Woman with the boys. We had such a good time that we went up again this Sunday.
“Most of our children spend a year in grade school studying the history of their home state. Shouldn’t they spend as least as much time studying their home ground? Let them take walks, handle stones and leaves and dirt, watch squirrels and bats and bugs, pore over photographs and fossils and maps, feel the land in their bones. We grown-ups could explore along with them. You don’t need a degree in biology to listen for geese honking by overhead, to see burst milkweed pods loose their down seeds, to run your fingers over the ledges in roadcuts, to watch a storm blow in from the horizon, to sample water from a creek, to discover in any of the countless details that make up the life of a place.”
