Have you seen Needles Highway?! This year was the first time Todd and I decided to check it out, and man, were we glad we did! It was beautiful!
It was amazing, but after a while, I was forced to admit to Todd that I just couldn't get past the fact that the rock formations looked uncannily like bundles of turds. What can I say? I've been a mom of successive Under-Fives for the last decade; I look at a lot of turds every day as a matter of course.
See? You other moms of preschoolers can't not see it, right?
This is the liberated smile of a mother who finds herself in the midst of hundreds of truly massive poops, and not responsible to clean up a single one. There is no smile more genuine.
The kids were duly impressed:
We drove past Sylvan Lake on the way home, which was beautiful as well. I like to pretend that someday, when the kids are older, I will be the kind of person who kayaks and hikes and things like that. A real Thoreau, traversing the land with a sense of purpose and fulfillment. I like to pretend that my deep commitment to mothering the tiny set is the only thing keeping me from this.
In order to keep pretending these things, I have to conveniently forget the fact that I am not outdoorsy in the least, and never have been, even long before I had kids.
Almost every instance in which I have tried doing something adventurous outdoors has ended with a very embarrassing take-home story. Once, I went swimming in a quarry, and a fish bit off part of my belly button, leaving a bloody wound, and I was pretty sure I was going to contract giardia. Another time, I was 'strongly encouraged' (read: forced as a part of a group exercise) to climb a rock face, got about ten feet up, and then would not come back down because I was too scared to rappel backwards, and too scared to climb higher. I have a bum ankle from once gracelessly sliding off an innertube into three-foot-deep waters and hitting my foot on the bottom of the lake, and the resulting sprain never fully healed and has plagued me ever since. I later rolled the same ankle while on a hike, stepping off a 6-inch-high rock. (Ironically, we were in South Dakota at that time, too, and I started screaming bloody murder and would just not quit, and Todd was whispering at me to shut up because I would attract mountain lions. Todd is also not outdoorsy.)
These kind of things never happened to Thoreau, I am certain.
These are the realities of my life, but luckily do not get in the way of the reading of books, or the watching of Amazon Prime, so I don't feel the daily chronic sting of all my missed nature-y opportunities until we drive past places like Sylvan Lake and I start pretending again... sigh. Wouldn't it be glorious to kayak here? It would be such a beautiful place to sprain an ankle or catch giardia.
Ah, well. We viewed it from the comfort of the leather seats of the Kristy Chrysler, which is my kind of outdoor experience, anyway. So, in that way, I can in good conscience say we almost kayaked here. We basically kayaked here. I think Thoreau would be almost, basically proud of me.
3 comments :
Jon always says I like the idea of nature but not nature itself. :-)
I do want to be the kind of parent though who enters in with their children in outdoor activities and doesn't always defer to Dad or making them go it on their own. This year, at our annual Family Camp, while pregnant no less :-), I did try to actively answer "yes" to the kids requests instead of my regular default "no". I was so glad I did!
i really liked Needles Hwy. it was fun to discover something which will most certainly become a part of our regular Black Hills vacation experience.
and yes, needles looks like turdles.
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