Get thee to the gully
When I was a boy, I used to play in “the gully,” a wooded area
near my Greece
home. It was a sacred space where I saw my first Playboy, played with matches, and jumped bikes over a creek like EvelKnievel.
I remember those things fondly, but the gully also gave me a deep
appreciation for nature. Often, while the boys shot BB guns, I would opt for
solitude, time with frogs and salamanders, birds and butterflies.
As a father now, and a city dweller, I wonder what my kids will
find to approximate the gully. That remains to be seen, but I plan to do all I
can to help them appreciate the natural world around them. Here are a few
activities available to us all:
-Feed the chickadees. Pick up the trail at the Mendon Ponds
nature center, put some sunflower seeds in your hand, and wait for those
ambassadors of goodwill to light and make you smile during the harshest winter
days.
-Pick some fruit. Everyone’s talking apples now,
and rightly so. But our area is flush with u-pick farms for various fruits
throughout summer. The kids love it, you get great eats cheap, and they learn
that food doesn’t always come from Wegmans.
-See stars. Every Saturday from April through early December, the
Rochester Astronomy Club welcomes the public to use the Strasenburgh
Planetarium’s telescope at RMSC. What better way to show little ones that the
world, indeed, does not revolve around them.
It’s inevitable that I’ll eventually have to compete with video
games for my kids’ attention. But with regular exposure to more pure and
timeless experiences like these, perhaps they’ll lead a richer life, and maybe
even thank me for it one day.
This article appears in Nov 1-7, 2006.
