Twelve Again
In honour of Canada Day, I was fortunate to enjoy a long holiday weekend. Living at my Lakeside Lair is almost like having a holiday everyday but this weekend was particularly restful for me.
A few months ago we decided to take on a house guest for the summer. Lise's clown-partner Lara needed a change of venue so we suggested she come and hang out with us for awhile. She's a very cool gal - plays electric bass in our shed, plays Chopin on our piano, knows all the 70s rock bands, drives a 63 Rambler and likes to restore old bicycles.
One day as Lise and Lara were driving home from their shift at Leamington hospital they saw a couple of bikes for sale at the side of the road. They were a pair of vintage CCM coaster bikes and needed some work but the farmer only wanted five bucks a piece for them! When I saw them in the shed propped up against Lara's bass amp I squealed with delight.
I tried to hide it but I couldn't wait for her to begin working on them so I could ask to take one for a test spin. She had to special order new tires and that took several weeks but soon, she had the chains all greased, the chrome fenders gleaming and the new tires installed. I bought two chrome bells for the handle bars and we took them for a spin around the neighbourhood.
I had forgotten how much I loved bike riding. She said we could use them anytime we wanted to so I thought we should get a bike carrier for the car and take them out for a real ride in the country.
For this holiday weekend we decided we would get up early Monday morning and take the bikes for a spin. I won't get into the gory details of how we had to stuff the bikes into the trunk of my car because we didn't have a wrench big enough to take the ball off my trailer hitch to install the bike carrier but we were determined to go riding.
Thanks to the clever use of bungee cords, we drove the few kilometres into Harrow and unloaded at the entrance to the Chrysler Greenway. The Greenway is part of the Trans Canada Trail and is about 50 kilometres of abandoned rail line converted to public trails. In our area it runs behind residential areas, soybean fields, vineyards, wineries, through wetlands and Carolinian forest. Lise and I had gone geocaching at points along the trail but this was our first bike ride.
Not far from the Harrow entrance, as you bike through the woods along the trail, one of the first things you notice is the aroma of wine-soaked oak barrels. As you move further you can see a mountain of barrels stacked behind Colio winery. We biked to the Arner Town Line and back and along the way passed vineyards, fields of zucchini and apple orchards. We crossed Cedar Creek and stopped to admire how the willows' boughs bent to the water's edge. We noted the blackberries would be ripening soon and promised to come back with a pail.
The trail was awash with wild grapes, woodland strawberries, blackberry shrubs, clover, black-eyed Susans, and Rose of Sharon. The air was rich with smells of horses, manure and wildflower blossoms. As I rode I was reminded of my maternal grandfather. He was an outdoorsman and loved being in the bush. As a child he would take us into the bush to pick berries and while we stuffed our cheeks with fruit he would name every plant and tell of its use. He knew which ones were poisonous, which ones were good for cuts and bruises and which ones were good to eat. He could look at the ground and tell you what kind of animal made which track. For a little girl who grew up in the Bronx I was lucky to have family in Canada with whom I spent my summers.
Not every child is as fortunate. On the local CBC morning radio show they interviewed Richard Louv. He wrote the book 'Last Child in the Woods' about how today's children no longer play outside like we did when we were kids. He spoke about what he called nature deficit and the psychological, spiritual and social impact of raising children who are detached from nature. He draws a connection between the incidence of child obesity and attention deficit disorder and children's preference for indoor play such as video gaming and computers. He says that parents' fear of Lyme disease, pedophiles and West Nile, or lack of access to natural areas or our growing litigatious society which restricts the use of wild space, are what causes children's connection to nature to suffer.
How very sad. How very sad that we are raising an entire generation of kids who may never know the wonder of catching fireflies in mayonnaise jars. Who may never sink to the tops of their rubber boots in a bullfrog's bog and land on their doorstep in muddy-sock feet or reach through prickly vines to eat berries they pick themselves. Who've never tried to glue together the pale blue halves of a robin's egg or learned to make duck calls by cupping a blade of crabgrass between their thumbs or collected seashells or beach glass. How sad that the only tree forts these kids will ever know are now engineered in weather resistant plastic and pressure treated lumber and not recycled pallets, milk crates and discarded kitchen curtains.
How very important it is to support the preservation of natural spaces like the Chrysler Greenway and the Trans Canada Trail so that tomorrow's kids can, as I did on Monday, know what it feels like to be twelve again.
A few months ago we decided to take on a house guest for the summer. Lise's clown-partner Lara needed a change of venue so we suggested she come and hang out with us for awhile. She's a very cool gal - plays electric bass in our shed, plays Chopin on our piano, knows all the 70s rock bands, drives a 63 Rambler and likes to restore old bicycles.
One day as Lise and Lara were driving home from their shift at Leamington hospital they saw a couple of bikes for sale at the side of the road. They were a pair of vintage CCM coaster bikes and needed some work but the farmer only wanted five bucks a piece for them! When I saw them in the shed propped up against Lara's bass amp I squealed with delight.
I tried to hide it but I couldn't wait for her to begin working on them so I could ask to take one for a test spin. She had to special order new tires and that took several weeks but soon, she had the chains all greased, the chrome fenders gleaming and the new tires installed. I bought two chrome bells for the handle bars and we took them for a spin around the neighbourhood.
I had forgotten how much I loved bike riding. She said we could use them anytime we wanted to so I thought we should get a bike carrier for the car and take them out for a real ride in the country.
For this holiday weekend we decided we would get up early Monday morning and take the bikes for a spin. I won't get into the gory details of how we had to stuff the bikes into the trunk of my car because we didn't have a wrench big enough to take the ball off my trailer hitch to install the bike carrier but we were determined to go riding.
Thanks to the clever use of bungee cords, we drove the few kilometres into Harrow and unloaded at the entrance to the Chrysler Greenway. The Greenway is part of the Trans Canada Trail and is about 50 kilometres of abandoned rail line converted to public trails. In our area it runs behind residential areas, soybean fields, vineyards, wineries, through wetlands and Carolinian forest. Lise and I had gone geocaching at points along the trail but this was our first bike ride.
Not far from the Harrow entrance, as you bike through the woods along the trail, one of the first things you notice is the aroma of wine-soaked oak barrels. As you move further you can see a mountain of barrels stacked behind Colio winery. We biked to the Arner Town Line and back and along the way passed vineyards, fields of zucchini and apple orchards. We crossed Cedar Creek and stopped to admire how the willows' boughs bent to the water's edge. We noted the blackberries would be ripening soon and promised to come back with a pail.
The trail was awash with wild grapes, woodland strawberries, blackberry shrubs, clover, black-eyed Susans, and Rose of Sharon. The air was rich with smells of horses, manure and wildflower blossoms. As I rode I was reminded of my maternal grandfather. He was an outdoorsman and loved being in the bush. As a child he would take us into the bush to pick berries and while we stuffed our cheeks with fruit he would name every plant and tell of its use. He knew which ones were poisonous, which ones were good for cuts and bruises and which ones were good to eat. He could look at the ground and tell you what kind of animal made which track. For a little girl who grew up in the Bronx I was lucky to have family in Canada with whom I spent my summers.
Not every child is as fortunate. On the local CBC morning radio show they interviewed Richard Louv. He wrote the book 'Last Child in the Woods' about how today's children no longer play outside like we did when we were kids. He spoke about what he called nature deficit and the psychological, spiritual and social impact of raising children who are detached from nature. He draws a connection between the incidence of child obesity and attention deficit disorder and children's preference for indoor play such as video gaming and computers. He says that parents' fear of Lyme disease, pedophiles and West Nile, or lack of access to natural areas or our growing litigatious society which restricts the use of wild space, are what causes children's connection to nature to suffer.
How very sad. How very sad that we are raising an entire generation of kids who may never know the wonder of catching fireflies in mayonnaise jars. Who may never sink to the tops of their rubber boots in a bullfrog's bog and land on their doorstep in muddy-sock feet or reach through prickly vines to eat berries they pick themselves. Who've never tried to glue together the pale blue halves of a robin's egg or learned to make duck calls by cupping a blade of crabgrass between their thumbs or collected seashells or beach glass. How sad that the only tree forts these kids will ever know are now engineered in weather resistant plastic and pressure treated lumber and not recycled pallets, milk crates and discarded kitchen curtains.
How very important it is to support the preservation of natural spaces like the Chrysler Greenway and the Trans Canada Trail so that tomorrow's kids can, as I did on Monday, know what it feels like to be twelve again.
1 Comments:
It sounds like a beautiful trip. I've got to make it across Canada one day and visit the trail.
paul
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