I had intended to write about the following on the day that it happened, but time got away from me... Anyway, here is the scene:
So, we live by some pretty awesome woods... Jody walks to school/work through them most mornings when she is at DHMC... I have jogged in them many times... and Jody and I have taken several hikes through them. The several times I have tired to take Ethan into the forest, he is reluctant and gives up when we hit the first difficult walking. I had made a vow at the beginning of the summer to spend lots of time in the forest. It was not to be, however. I had grand plans, though... we were gonna fix up a little bridge, build a little house, and create a whole little world... The few times the weather and the fickle muses of timing and motivation saw fit to shine on us, Ethan would make it as far the medium brush and just cry "Daddy I need help," which would quite quickly turn into "I wanna go home" ... and shortly thereafter we would go home.
So, it's middle to late Fall and I just decide one afternoon that Ethan and I are going to have a forest adventure. The weather was good and Ethan was itching for a new adventure (other parents might call this being bored). We put on our jackets and headed out to the woods. It took us a little bit to find the right place to cross the stream and enter the edge of the forest, but we eventually did. We spent some time picking up various sticks and testing them for quality by smacking them against trees. Ethan was into this, which boded well for the rest of the trip.
Well-chosen sticks in hand, we headed into the medium brush and, as always, Ethan got stuck. He called out "Daddy, I need help." "Are you having a hard time getting through the brush?" I asked him. "Yes!" he whined. "Well, then just knock them down with your stick," I said, matter-of-factly. "That's the joy of coming out here to the woods, Ethan," I said, "hitting things with sticks." I then held my stout stick like I learned in Kendo class and went on a rampage slicing various dry weeds like a Samurai warrior fighting furiously through a host of enemies. "God I love this," I say to myself.
I look back at Ethan and is trying to fling weeds out of the way while holding his stick with one hand. I tell Ethan that he should use two hands and swing it as hard as he can. Then, I swear I saw a glint flash from the corner of his eye, and he raised his stick up in the air with two hands and started chopping innocent brush like the mad child that he is, like the human incarnation of entropy showing the world what's what.
I exaggerate of course, but once he started whacking those weeds as hard as he could, he never looked back. We spent 3 hours galavanting around the forest. We kept upgrading our sticks. I would find a good one, and Ethan would want it, so we would trade. Then I would find another one and we would trade back, and so on... It was SO much fun. After I had gathered some small sticks to use as throwing knives and was attacking a giant dead tree from a distance (to get it's attention before closing in for the kill)... it was a forest giant, by the way... I found Ethan with his excited face asking me to come and see. "Come look, daddy," he said. I followed him up the knoll a little ways and he showed me an old fallen pine tree that had gotten soft. Using a stick, he had hollowed out a little section and made a little bowl out of one end of the tree. He had then gathered some moss, little sticks, and tree bark to make soup. To top it off, he had also gotten some medium sized sticks to "build a small fire" beneath his tree-bowl to cook the soup. I just smiled and gave him a big hug.
For the better part of an hour, I adventured around the rocks and trees of our little knoll like Aragorn battling Uruk-hai and Ethan worked on improving his tree-bowl and finding new ingredients for his soup. I couldn't have been happier. I played like I hadn't since my parents died and I was forced to leave the lush, adventurous forest I had grown up with. And Ethan started to learn to love the forest and learn what joys can be had there. It was one of the few times when parenting Ethan felt perfect.
