Our yard space is small, which makes me sad. But beyond the grass lies a world of field, flower, woods and berries that brings joy to my heart. The walk into the field gives us grassy goodness, fresh daisies for our home, and a short walk to the woods, and beyond the woods is an unused dirt road stretching for miles. There we can run, bike, or find wild blackberries, and the dog can run free to her heart’s content. The road offers views of the mountains through the tall trees, too. It’s all so good. Now to get my kids to go there on their own, without me, to dream, build and explore as we want them to.
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Living here in a Texas, I feel there isn’t even a place to send the kids like this. I always dreamed we would send them off in the woods to explore, just like my husband and I did as kids…. But hopefully, we will make the best of it here, then head to a different adventure. Love these!
I just added this facebook feature to my blog, Brooke Gustafson, and it was fun to see this pop up in my feed! I was all, “Hey, that’s MY article!” Anyway, if it makes you feel any better, they still don’t go out there without me making it happen and taking them out of the house. They get stuck inside playing legos and listening to audio books (which is better than TV and video games), and this place is still so new and foreign to them/us, and it’s not “ours”. But still, I want and need to encourage them (or force them) to go outside and explore. I feel thankful to have a bit of space for my children right now, and I hope we all take advantage of it.
We just came from FL where we had the beach but very little open space outside of that (and even here I miss the space the beach had to offer). This place is a rare gift for military folk, where there is a ton of space all over the place, water and mountains and woods and fields everywhere. I get that it won’t be like this for long for us, being military. Here, even base housing feels very limited compared to what’s possible off-base, where almost everyone has chickens and a huge plot of land. It’s a head trip for me to experience such vast change in my life as we move from place to place, and I am still reeling from how different WA is from FL.
I have missed Montana and am happy to be back here. It’s bittersweet, this military life, isn’t it?
What are the next possible places you could go Brooke Gustafson?