Walking in the Woods

(Published in 2009)

We went for a wonderful walk in the woods last week. (There’s alliteration that would make my old English teacher proud!) It was a nice crisp, clear afternoon and I had just collected Ryan from school. So when we got home he quickly changed out of his uniform, my better half wrapped up our one year old daughter, Katy, in something warm and way too pink and after throwing the buggy in the boot we set off on the short drive to our local forest park, a couple of miles from our house in suburbia.

The path weaves through some trees before passing by a grassed picnic area near a small lake and on through a larger, densely wooded area before returning back to the start by a slightly different route. To do the whole circuit is a bit of a walk so we tend only do two-thirds of it, as small legs are not able for much more than that. Neither are Ryan and Katy’s for that matter.

As we walked, pushing Katy’s buggy, Ryan ran ahead a little to scout the way before returning to us with something exciting to impart such as a collection of feathers that marked the demise of a pigeon or a fallen branch that ‘looks a bit like a monster’. It really was a pleasant way to spend an afternoon, even Katy got in on the act. She wobbled along the path in her new shoes looking like a mini pink Michelin man in her padded jacket, pointing and grunting at anything that moved including a couple of startled joggers she encountered.

The thing is, we didn’t actually see too many people. There were a few cars in the car park but apart from the joggers the only other person we saw was a man walking his dog. It seemed strange to me that the place was so quiet. Sure it was a weekday and yes it was a little cool but not overly so, so why were there not more people about?

It’s a wonderful place to learn about nature and how plants, and animals of course, function in their natural environment. It’s an ideal place to see what happens in autumn when the leaves start to fall from the trees and the various fungi peep through the detritus on the forest floor or perch precariously from a rotting log. At the risk of sounding like David Attenborough, the life cycle of many things surround us in places such as these, and it’s a bit like a living classroom as far a teaching about nature is concerned. Just without the uniforms and Ben 10 lunch boxes.

I must say we are as guilty as everyone else with regard to bringing our kids ‘back to nature’. We don’t get out to these places as often as we should and it’s only when we do get here that I realise what our kids are missing out on.

I grew up in the countryside and learned about nature from what I saw around me in the fields, ditches and woods. Myself, my sisters and our friends would traipse through the local countryside in all seasons and weather, for no reason other than it was the only thing to do. Especially if you wanted to avoid doing things like homework, housework or any other chores. I guess we absorbed nature while we were out and about. It soaked into our bodies as we climbed oak trees, waded through streams and on one memorable occasion found a decomposing fox in a field and poked it with sticks until we got bored, which was a good while later.

Now I live in the town. My children will grow up as ‘Townies’, that pale-faced race we shunned when we were kids (Is that a racist comment?), and I fear that in this bubble-wrapping, child-cosseting, health and safety-fied world we now live in that they won’t experience nature. Learning about it and from it at the same time. I worry that they’ll never get to poke that dead fox with a stick. Does any of that make sense?

This all relates back to gardening of course, in case you thought I had once again gone off on a tangent. You need to know about nature and how it works before you can understand why a shrub flowers at a certain time, why plants berry, why some trees loose their leaves or why moss grows in your lawn. This is because a lot of gardening is not knowledge as such but absorbed common sense from a knowing how nature works.

I think I have a good bit of catching up to do with Ryan but I still have time. Katy should be easier as she’s so young and she might absorb things a little easier. That is providing we can loose the pink, puffy, nature-deflecting look she currently has.

Perhaps I can still knock that ‘Townieness’ out of them to some degree!

So today we’re off to the woods again and hopefully we’ll see something new. Maybe some ripened hazelnuts, a rabbit burrow or something else new and exciting to a now five year old. Although I’m not sure if he’s up to a dead fox yet, and I doubt if his teacher would like it on the nature table either!