Midstokke: Parenting outside against better judgment

The creek-now-river rushed over my toes, frigid and teasing in little curls of clear water. It rushed over the now defunct bridge that once crossed it, hugged the shoreline it was making, then wrapped around a bend and poured through the redwoods toward an ocean I could not see.

It was a cold, damp morning like any other morning in the redwoods. The weather beyond the trees could have been bright and warm, but in there was fog and ferns and a dinosaur waiting behind every tree.

I rolled up my pants a little higher and waded into the current. It tugged at my ankles, then my calves, then my knees. Its threats subsided and became mere goading as it shallowed once again.

“Seems safe enough,” I said cheerfully as I crossed again to the opposite shore where my baby was babbling in her stroller, entirely unaware of the adventure we were on.

This account pretty much describes the next eight years of her life as well. I have made a career of calculated risks in parenting. So far, we’ve remained unscathed.

We crossed several washed out creeks that day, each a little more questionable than the next. I prided myself several times on my stroller choice. When you’re a trail running mom, it’s all about high clearance.

I had spent years watching my outdoor friends drop by the wayside when runs and risks were replaced with parenting and, woe of woes, caution. I was oblivious to the way having children altered ones innate recklessness.

After my daughter was born, I felt it once in the mountains. She was camping at base camp with my father as I attempted a summit. The conditions got sketchy a few hundred feet shy. On a different day I would have continued, but that day I knew that a three-foot-tall version of me awaited my return. Sometimes having kids is the smartest thing you can do.

While our children alter us – for the better no doubt – the tendency to forget our former lives, those things that defined us and brought us joy, is palpable and real. The sentences that begin with “Before kids…” end with a trailing off of memories of adventure and outdoor shenanigans.

It is a travesty, of course. Because all of the things that made our lives richer and wilder and fuller are precisely the reason we wanted children: To share in that love, to make our lives yet fuller.

My daughter reminds me that there are adventures to be had right here in our home. I respond by suggesting dusting or vacuuming adventures, and both of us are a little relieved when we opt for sledding instead.

When we sled, the laughter is loud, uninhibited. We go down the big hill and our sled bumps and launches and comes to a rolling crash of limbs and pink toboggan and hilarity. Mittens are strewn across the snow like little casualties of excess fun.

We look up the mountain, try to get the snow out of our shirts, and agree that our choice of route was on the verge of crazy. Which is just where we want to live anyway.