We brought the family on a hike on Day 2 of social distancing, determined to keep our minds clear and our bodies moving. Of course, we had to watch Frozen 2 first so that I could see what happened. I’ve never related more to Olaf in my entire life.
We decided to hike the hills behind our house to limit our contact with others and because Hailey has never joined us on “artichoke mountain” before. This was such a great learning and bonding experience for our family. Hailey got to find snails and was ever so careful to avoid them. The boys charged up the hill, as if they had boundless energy and no fear of climbing hills, and Hailey and I took the hills slowly and one step at a time. We took that opportunity to practice counting to 10 and then to 20. It was a fun little game of “Mommy will carry you up this massive hill for 10 seconds, and then you walk for 20 seconds, and then sadly repeat until mommy passes out.”
I love hiking with Hailey because she gets tired and starts to say, “I can’t do this,.” This is always my chance to be her biggest fan and life coach. Look, yes, this is hard, but we’ve done hard things before. Then I insert some distracting example of a time that she did something REALLY hard.
Just like this current situation, there are two important things we always have to do with faced with a hard challenge:
1. take a deep, healing breath and
2. take it one step at a time, then repeat this cycle until we’ve made it up the literal or figurative hill.
My favorite part of this? I get to hold my daughter’s hand and teach her how to face challenges in a controlled way. We feel the fear and step into it anyway. Then we ALWAYS turn around, look at that hill we just dominated, and she screams “WE DID IT! WE MADE IT!”
Mason and I made it our mission to take pictures of all the flowers we found on the trail with the plan to look them up at home and read about them. We also looked for new or creepy bugs and took pictures of them, too.
We stopped, enjoyed the fresh air, the slowing of our hearts after the climb, and tried to find our house in the distance. We also pretended we could see Auntie’s house too, even though, according to Mason she lives in the boonies and another country.
On the walk down the hill, I asked them to walking slowly and be aware of their footing, but of course they charged forward without minding my words at all. However, we try to allow them to explore and learn with a bit more freedom in nature than we can afford them on the busy streets.
Hailey whispered to Mason, “I’m scared to fall” and he said, “then hold my hand.”
She fell down a few minutes later and Mason bent down, hugged her, helped her up, and whispered, “That’s what big brothers are for: to help their sisters and keep them safe.” Can we just take a moment and appreciate the sweet nature of that kid? He may be hell on wheels most days, but he surely loves his people.
Next time, join us on our adventure? Well, not physically because then I’d have to run away from you to keep my distance, but you know, bring your family out into nature. Reconnect with the earth, your breath, and your family. I promise, it is worth it. Unless you get lost, have to drink your own pee or breastmilk, and then realize you were just behind the hill from your house. If you think that might happen to you, maybe bring a GPS.
