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Thinking Outside the (Nature) Box

JULIE SEILER MEMORIAL SCHOLARSHIP

Three essays written by Julie:

Thinking Outside the (Nature) Box

A Weight Like Hope

My Own True North

Essay written by The 1st Recipient of the Julie Seiler Memorial Scholarship Fund

Hannah, to me, is like a visitor from another planet. She’s always playing dress-up or Barbies, so I quickly join in whatever one of the other kids is doing before she asks me to play. It isn’t as much anti-Barbie snobbishness, or a feminist objection-to-objectification as it is pure fear. I don’t know how to play Barbies. The only dolls I recall playing with as a child were the “Sunshine Family,” a hippy-ish mom and dad with a tiny baby and a groovy camper. The dad had cool hiking pants with cargo pockets and little plastic hiking boots. I don’t remember what Mrs. Sunshine wore, only that she was tragically hit and killed by the family camper (an event my own mother took rather personally).

This year, for Hannah’s birthday, I gave her a coupon for an “Outdoor Adventure with Aunt Julie.” Hannah’s cousin Kristie, a photographer (and my competition for coolest relative), took her on a photo shoot where Hannah was the glamorous model – leaving me to wonder whether the outdoor adventure was a bit too ambitious.

Hannah was thrilled with the idea. “What should we wear?!” After she decided that we’d wear tie-dyed t-shirts, we decided on a hike. She asked me, “Does Mommy have to come? Does anyone else have to come?”

I stressed over planning the Adventure. I wanted it to be meaningful, life-changing, and fun. I bought an old cigar box and used colored paper and markers to turn it into Hannah’s Nature Box for anything she wanted to bring home. I had a jar and some plastic wrap, in case we needed a terrarium. I brought binoculars, a camera, a magnifying glass, crayons, a sketch pad. I made sure I had all her favorite lunch foods: peanut butter sandwiches (no jelly), goldfish crackers, juice boxes and rice krispie treats. I looked at books of nature activities, in case we had a lull in our day. I spent more time prepping for our day trip than I usually do for an entire two-week expedition with the Vermont kids.

Hannah and I decided to go to Great Falls National Park in Maryland. We hiked out toward the observation deck overlooking the falls. Hannah bounced along, skipping the “boring” historical signs and reading me each sign about plants or animals. The walkway spanned a few of the side falls, and Hannah was intrigued. Standing only a few feet above the raging torrent, we threw sticks into different parts of the flow, guessing where they would resurface and having races between sticks. When we finally meandered over to the observation deck, far above and downstream of the falls, Hannah was unimpressed with our vantage point. “Those falls aren’t Great,” she said. Hannah has huge expectations of the world – when I once held her on my shoulders at the Museum of Natural History so she could peer over the crowd at the Hope Diamond, she loudly announced, “It isn’t very BIG, Aunt Julie!”

Hannah gripped my hand tightly with her small, sweaty hand as we hiked, and asked me every few minutes throughout the day: “This is only the beginning of my outdoor adventure, right, Aunt Julie?” And after lunch: “This is still just the beginning of my adventure, isn’t it?”

We left the falls and walked down the canal towpath toward the difficult four-mile Billygoat Trail, one that involves more rock scrambling than actual hiking. I figured we’d explore part of the trail and then head back, but Hannah was excited about doing the entire thing. I taught her how to follow the trail by connecting the blue blazes on the trees and rocks, and she loved leading us through the woods. I pointed out colonies of haircap moss. “Look, Aunt Julie!” she said, finding more moss, “Whole WORLDS of moss!” She took careful photos of everything: swallowtail butterflies, herons, turtles, tree bark (and a few still-lifes of a juice box). She liked the Nature Box idea, though everything she wanted to put in it was alive. I explained that the cute, fuzzy webworm caterpillar would not be happy in a cigar box, so we settled for observing its yellow hair and spots through the magnifying glass instead.

To Hannah, there were no rules for the Nature Box; she had a wide-open (though slightly misguided) idea of what could go into it. No limits. I, on the other hand, realized that I had placed nature in my own mental box, making judgments about who has the right, or ability, to appreciate it.

At one point the trail seems to dead-end at the bottom of a sloping cliff along the Potomac River. Faint blue blazes mark the way up, a rock -climb up a forty-foot long diagonal ledge. As I was wondering if we should turn back, Hannah, her light brown hair plastered to her face with sweat, scrambled up the ledge and shouted down for me to hurry up.

As I watched Hannah pick her way along the trail, in her tie-dyed shirt, fringy jeans shorts and carefully mismatched socks (one hot pink and one turquoise, the colors in her shirt), I realized that I had underestimated her, judging her solely by her apparent “girliness.” She’s a kindred soul who shares my love of nature, something that I’m not sure can be taught. Where does it come from? Rachel Carson said, “If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in.” I’ve always believed that my love of nature came from my father, who took me on adventures in the woods (I was his youngest daughter, and also his only son).

Hannah stumps me because she comes to her love of nature differently than I do. I’m chagrined that I assumed girliness and being strong, capable and adventurous are mutually exclusive. Do I know any other women like Hannah, who merge those qualities? I do – my mother, who despite her silk scarves and carefully-chosen earrings, loves to frolic in the ocean waves until her lips turn blue.

When Hannah and I returned from our day, we ordered pizza and spent an hour using colored pencils to draw all the plants and animals we had seen on our Adventure. We stocked the Nature Box with Hannah’s finds, and she beamed. Just as I was thinking it was time for me to head home, she asked, “Want to play Barbies?”

Julie Seiler

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