I feel lucky to have had my formative years prior to the widespread availability of the internet. Born in the late 1970’s, growing and learning through the 80’s and 90’s offered an experience that children born once the internet, and more specifically widespread mobile internet, will never be able to have. I was raised in the last generation of feral children. That is not to say that I wasn’t cared for, or that parenting was lacking in my upbringing. My parents did a great job. I wasn’t a latchkey kid. It was just a different world.
For me the home my family lived in always felt like too close quarters for the number of people living in the space. I am one who very much values solitude and it’s hard to find solitude in a 1000 square feet with 6 people. As such, I lived outside. When school was not in session I could usually be found rounding up the gaggle of kids that lived on our street for a game of catch. We used to play in the middle of the street, ever vigilant watching for cars. We lived in a neighborhood where most households still only had one family car and they were generally parked off street in driveways or backyard garages. We rode our bikes and played hide and seek – I was the expert hider of the smaller kids and sometimes we had to call the game when they were hidden so well they couldn’t be found by the finder. We were a rag tag group, only friends by association because we all lived in the same place. I was the leader, mostly due to the convenient fact that I was the oldest, but also because I was the one who most often took charge.
We had a place nearby, a few hundred acres of undeveloped land that seemed to have been forgotten by the city growing around it. A place with hills and valleys that felt much bigger than it actually was. Just into my teens this place became accessible to me as a suitable place to spend time. I would sometimes round up my cohort and we would spend the day exploring this land that time forgot. There were motorcycle and 4 wheel drive trails made by people who had little respect for the landscape, these offered us easy access to the places that would have been much less accessible by foot had a path not been forged. There was a walking trail too, on the far west side, in a valley on this landscape, placed there and deemed a park.
In our explorations we found a spring fed pond where we would spend hours playing, exploring, and pretending; some of us swimming. There were two small creeks, unusual for our semi arid landscape these days. The one from the pond overflow and another, smaller one, to the East that emerged out of the ground like magic. Moving down out of the sun in these watery places provided much desired cool respite from the summer heat. We found small fish, and tadpoles and one summer a muskrat. There were snakes and frogs, toads and lizards. On one of our adventures I nearly stepped on a bull snake sunning on the path. Something on the wagon I was pulling started to slip and I stopped to readjust. I turned to take the next step and there was a big beautifully camouflaged snake soaking up the needed heat to make it through the cool night. I found a stick and asked it to move along as some of the younger kids were in fearful awe. We agreed not to tell the grown-ups. Dad is deathly afraid of all manner of snakes.
I once climbed an apple tree that seemed rather out of place among the elms, cottonwoods and willows to get one of the three remaining apples still clinging to it’s uppermost branches. On my way down the tree caught my belt loop and there was just enough pressure that I was stuck, couldn’t go up or down. I thought for sure I was going to have to send my friend to find my mom and that I would be toast, not because I climbed the tree, but because mom would have to stop whatever it was she was doing to come save me; what if they had to get the fire department? That was a terrifying thought. At that I got myself unstuck. Once I did I felt a sense that I could problem solve most things on my own, and that next time I needed to have a plan. This place provided it’s fair share of skinned knees, bumps, bruises and cuts. All of which were brushed off as a normal part of the experience. And getting out of that tree was no exception. One season there was a choke cherry tree that was bursting with fruit. We picked as much as we could carry without anything suitable to carry the fruit in. We made choke cherry juice with our spoils. Mom confessed later to have done the same in a different year to make choke cherry jelly.
There was the realness of feeling feral, wild, nature connected, satisfied, and safe but with a hint of danger. We would return home only once fully exhausted by the adventures of the day, reveling in the possibilities of discovery in that magical place in the days to follow.
I had my fair share of time to myself on this land as well. Once I was a little older and began to be more selective of my friends I began to find respite in this natural place. We didn’t have a dog but my neighbor had one that I had grown fond of and he and I would set out on our walks into the wilds. This wild place became my meditation. The place where I could escape the chaos and noise. I memorized every path, every turn, the trees, the ground cover, the rocks. They were my friends as much as any person could be. I spent hours walking, sitting, examining and taking in the nature around me. I knew it in all seasons. What it looked and felt like when it was in it’s bones of winter, all the way through to fully clothed in a blanket of green and shaded in summer. I knew the birdsong, and rodents, the sound of the water. Where I could find a warm spot in the cool of fall, or a cool spot in the heat of summer. I knew where I was likely to come across other people and where I could be completely alone.
The whole time I was growing up there were rumors that a road was planned through my wild place. It took so many years that I began to believe it wasn’t true and that this forgotten land was safe from the infiltration of the city. Nearly 30 years later and within this last year the road went in. With the road, the development is moving in and my wild place is disappearing. Soon it will be gobbled up by our constant need to use up every bit of natural landscape.
It makes me sad knowing that I am in the last generation to know this place, intimately, as wild, untamed and natural. This land had a hand in the formation of who I am. It will never again be a place of wild abandon for a gaggle of rag tag kids seeking an adventure. Of skinned knees, and scraped arms, and bruises. Of choke cherry picking, and apple tree climbing, and problem solving. It will be missing it’s snakes and frogs, lizards and toads. One of the two creeks has been paved over. And this is breaking my heart.
We’re running out of wild places within cities. And the few that have been designated are so full of people desiring the feel for nature that they can’t even be considered wild places anymore. Our kids no longer have the opportunity for the landscape to shape who they are with untamed places. They are disappearing. It’s a shame that they will never know the plants and animals that once made the landscape where they live home. They will not likely have the opportunity to have adventurous times with each other, unsupervised, to discover their strength. To learn to get along with your neighbors because that is who you have. To return home slightly sunburned, hungry, tired, dirty and satisfied.
We need our wild places.
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