Father and daughter just a couple of kids at camp
Beginning with the whole business of shuffling around on her knees well past the time she was capable of standing to walk, our youngest child Sylvia always seemed content to remain as close to the earth as she possibly could be.
Even after she graduated from knees to feet, we’d still find her rolling in the dirt at every opportunity. A favorite photo shows her playing in the rain at the age of 3. Here, rather than finding a precious little darling swirling about under a pink umbrella and matching rubber boots, we see a seemingly feral child crouched on her hands and knees in an inches-deep puddle on our gravel drive. Soaked through and through, her brown curls droop to the water, and a muddy smile suggests she’s recently sampled the water and found it pleasing. Few things have changed.
After graduating with a degree in journalism (of all things), Sylvia has plotted a course from camp to camp, from one coast to another, where she’s worked leading children on adventures in the great outdoors. These lessons likely include demonstrative tutelage in how to best approach a mud puddle. At the age of 25, she’s intent on making this her life. Her mother and I couldn’t be happier with the decision. It’s one thing to enjoy the outdoors; it’s wholly another to truly belong there. It’s been clear from the cradle that Sylvia, whose name from Latin means spirit of the forest, truly belongs.
And so in an effort to further legitimize what destiny has decreed, Sylvia has returned to school to study the very things she already teaches. That’s the way the world goes at times, and I don’t begrudge the system. Heck, if I didn’t have to make a living, I’d spend all my hours trying to learn more about the things I love. The fun thing about Sylvia’s situation is I sometimes get to actively participate in her study. To that end, I booked us on a little adventure a few weekends back with dozens of other like-minded individuals on a spring peeper netting, salamander scooping, “let’s roll over this log and see what’s underneath” romp in the Southern Ohio woods called Vernal Poolooza.
We slept on foam padded bunks, ate eggy-cheesy breakfast casserole in the cafeteria, and met daily in a rambling summer camp lodge where we listened to experts, took copious notes and looked forward to the night when the woods would come to life with crawling critters of every sort. Then headlamps ablaze, we slogged through woodland pools in a manner comically similar to Sylvia’s long-ago driveway puddle explorations. In a nod to good health and adulthood, we stopped short of sampling the swill, however. We sought amphibians and found them by the score. We spotted salamanders, newts, wood frogs, spring peepers — slippery sliders of all sorts ended up in our collection bucket for close examination followed by a gentle return to the wild.
True to the aspiration of any camp experience, we had a great time, made lots of new friends and learned plenty of new things along the way. The greatest gift of this adventure, however, was being able to experience again the boundless wonderment of a child in the outdoors — right alongside a kid of my own!
Kristin and John Lorson would love to hear from you. Write Drawing Laughter, P.O. Box 170, Fredericksburg, OH 44627, or email John at jlorson@alonovus.com.
