Late August and early September is a great time to listen for coyotes yipping, howling and barking at night!
Welcome to the August edition of Children in Nature. I hope you find something of use here and continue to check in from time to time as a parent, teacher, educator or anyone interested in supporting children explore the earth and our human relationships to the natural world. Don’t expect any deep philosophizing or rigorous pedagogy in this month’s Children in Nature. I want to simply offer some things to do and note a few highlights of what is going on in the natural world in New England. So I am going to bullet point this essay in an attempt to avoid my tendency to fall into the divergent, inosculating philosophical/poetic prose that is the birthright of any wonderer, wanderer, pied piper worth his or her salt!
Find water! Some people prefer the waves and the sea and others like streams, rivers, ponds and lakes but get out there and experience the wonder of water. Get to know your local streams, swimming holes, waterfalls, ponds, lakes and ocean beaches, and then branch out and find new places to explore. Go with other people and swap your favorite spots. I like waterfalls. Here are some suggestions for Connecticut. https://www.onlyinyourstate.com/connecticut/waterfalls-trip-ct/. Add Sperry Falls in Woodbridge to mix and help your children explore their natural environs. Also begin to consider the question of equal access to natural resources and structural racism. An interesting place to start is Free the Beaches: The Story of Ned Coll and the Battle for America’s Most Exclusive Shoreline by Andrew W. Kahrl, a “remarkable story about creative resistance to inequality—and about the ways that wealth and privilege have helped rob so many of a necessary connection to the natural world,” that also “shows that on the Connecticut shore, white liberalism and racial exclusion went hand in hand.”
Visit a farm stand and or a farm. Get some family favorites like corn, tomatoes, peaches, kale, carrots, and make a family dinner out of them. Or go to a working farm and visit goats, sheep, cows, horses or pick some of your own produce. Common Ground in New Haven Connecticut has a free open farm day every Saturday http://commongroundct.org/community-programs/ Talk to each other about where your food comes from. And enjoy the difference between eating fresh food versus eating processed food. Talk about the importance of farming in any society and the implications of different farming practices for the community and your family.
Find your local state or country fair and experience that unique melange of artifice and animals, carnival rides and games mixed with prize winning pigs, horses, cows and chickens. Check out this listing of Connecticut county fairs including the Goshen Fair and the Durham Fair. http://www.ctvisit.com/articles/connecticuts-country-fairs And look at listing of all the big fairs in New England! https://newengland.com/today/seasons/fall/new-england-fairs/ Fairs are wonderful places to just have fun, but they are also fascinating cultural sites to explore with your children, wherever you find yourself in the urban, suburban, small town, rural mix of contemporary life.
Go looking for mushrooms. Mushrooms are amazing. And August through November is prime mushroom hunting season. They come in so many shapes and sizes, colors and variations. Not plant, (they don’t generate their own energy from the sun like plants), not animal, (they don’t move around looking for food, rather they use enzymes to break down organic matter so they can grow), they are there own thing. Mushrooms also form what are called “mycorrhizal networks” with their hyphae (sort of the roots of the mushroom), that connect individual plants in complicated energy webs and act in symbiotic relationships with different species of trees. Mushrooms also are one of the chief decomposers of dead wood. Finally if you are patient and do your research you will soon be finding delicious mushrooms that you can eat.
It is also safe for children to touch mushrooms, examine them, make fairy houses with them, make spore prints with them etc. Just make sure that children do not ingest any mushroom that has not been verified as edible and that as always, children should wash their hands after being outside digging around in the dirt. Several good books to start with are the children’s book, Katya’s Book of Mushrooms, by Katya Arnold and Sam Swope, Mushrooming without Fear, by Alexander Schwab, Edible and Medicinal Mushrooms of New England and Eastern Canada, by David Spahr, The Complete Mushroom Hunter by Gary Lincoff, the National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms, by Gary Lincoff, and Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Save the World, by Gary Stamets. Of course nothing is better than going out with an expert who can show you the ropes, and it can be very helpful to go out with someone who shares your interest in mushrooming so that you can learn together.
Find a nice place to read a book outside. This could be on a porch or stoop, in the park, at the beach, in the woods or at an outdoor cafe. Some of the books that I am reading now are Skinny Dipping and other Immersions in Water, Myth, and Being Human by Janet Lemke, The Tree byJohn Fowles, Free the Beaches: The Story of Ned Coll and the Battle for America’s Most Exclusive Shoreline by Andrew W. Karhl, The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery, Calm and Compassionate Children: A Handbook by Susan Dermond, Jakes and Dustin Take Off: a radical book for children ages 1 to 100 and up by Tilke Elkins and Friends, and Animal Musicalities: Birds, Beasts and Evolutionary Listening by Rachel Mundy. But that’s just me. What do you want to explore and take the time to really delve into? Read a book and get into it like Gumby!
Make sure to walk out at night into the backyard, a park, or the woods and listen to the songs of male grasshoppers, katydids, crickets and cicadas. These insects along with many others, “must attract mates in order to breed and lay their eggs before temperatures begin to drop significantly” (Mary Holland). As you lose yourself in this polyphony of sounds and songs, it is impossible to not think that you are part of something much bigger than your fragile, little ego.
