Adventure Walk

As part of my campaign against sedentary kids spending too much time indoors, I took the boys and their cousin Anderson on a 2 1/2 hour hike around my parent's property. It's 30-acres that once was a turkey farm, but for the past 34 years has been home to the Hales, or the Kinderfarm (My Mom really likes those German words). I spent most of my kidhood in those wilds and always brought home a hundred sticky burrs and stepped on dozens of rusty nails with my bare feet (I thought this was an exaggerated memory till the day after this hike I took one bare-footed step out the back door and got a rusty nail in it!).

We started at the front creek and played pooh sticks and threw rocks and logs into the water. Then we explored the foundations of the old barns. The boys each found walking sticks/spears to defend themselves from wild creatures. Jack pooped out at this point as the weeds came up to his armpits and he wasn't a fan of that, so I took him back to the house.

I showed the boys sticky burrs and how they worked and how to avoid them. We followed deer trails and found where they liked to bed down. Found lots of poop of all sizes and made guesses as to what kind of animal made them. We climbed the 15-foot mountain that Dad Hale made for us to sled down in the winter.

The boys were really disappointed that the back river was dry as they were hot and tired and had looked forward to getting wet. I was determined to see the full perimeter of the property so we went past the river bed to the back fence and climbed through into a neighboring alfalfa field. It was much easier terrain so we hiked along till we reached the west fence. This is where it got really insane. We had to cross two, five-foot, tightly strung barbed-wire fences. All but Tal got poked on the first limbo through. So the next one Anderson and Cole refused to duck through and I had to lift them up and over. It was amazing that we made it without a literal hang-up.

So by this time the boys were thirsty and hungry and tired and on the verge of crying. I was regretting not bringing water or snacks, but I'd figured--we're just in the backyard! I was thinking these boys are never going to follow me outside again. Luckily we hit kid pay dirt as we were hiking back through the river bed. We found a "Bone Graveyard" where hundreds of bones from all kinds of animals were bleached and strewn between the river rocks. They filled their pockets and were totally stoked. Tal said we had to go to the Ranch, "Now" and put them with the rest of Hanah's bone collection.

A little further up the river bed we rested in the shade and noticed that the constant buzzing we'd been hearing was bees feeding on the six-inch high clover that was growing in the base of the river bed. We had a discussion about how the bees weren't hurting the flowers and the flowers were not going to attack the bees back, but that they were helping each other. Anderson asked, "But how come people steal the honey?" Kids have such a sense for injustice.

We made a bee-line back to the house and they were very relieved that they didn't die of thirst or hunger or exhaustion. And I was pleased that after lunch, they spent the rest of the day, and the majority of the following days, outside!