Twirling Leaf

“I’m going to shoot the moon!!!!” —me, believing I can achieve the highly unlikely best outcome in most situations

It has come to my attention that I have a tendency toward optimism that borders on delusional. For the most part, this has worked in my favor (it’s bad; see?). It gives me the confidence and hope to make bold moves, take risks, and experience big rewards. From camping in Masai Mara with lions hunting just outside our back packing tent (I’m sure they’ll just eat the Wildebeest and not us) to maintaining a 4.0 in grad school while nursing my infant and working full time (I’ll sleep when I’m dead), this tendency towards optimism for the seemingly impossible can come in handy. It allows me to reach past the bounds of realism and work with my imaginal vision for what I want to accomplish. Perception shapes, if not becomes, our reality. 

However.

There are some downsides to this indomitably positive facet of my being. I can misjudge or underestimate the consequences of aforementioned bold moves. Like the time I jumped barefoot off a cliff in Maine onto the rocks below. I shattered my right foot upon impact. Fortunately I was with the two best friends for such a situation as this: Nick, a military-trained medic, and Collin, aka MacGyver of the woods. So, all in all, I was fine. We finished out our weeklong camping trip and then I went home and got a proper cast. Lesson learned: don’t jump off cliffs onto rocks 10 feet below, especially barefoot. 

Selling our 64 acres in Vermont was not quite as impulsive as jumping off a cliff barefoot (I was only 18 when I did that, by the way), but—I will say—I did not fully consider the consequences of how it would feel to be 8 months on the other side of that decision. I imagined a month, two months, three months into the decision—but I didn’t picture how I would feel by that following June here after the initial shine of the decision had worn off—especially if things did not go according to plan. The consequences were bigger than some broken bones. 

I would say that until last June, I had never experienced real regret. I had always been able to maintain this idea of “it’s all grist for the mill” or “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger!” My belief around the current of vitality from my last post allows me to untether from my small self and plug into the bigger collective of Life Itself.

On June 6 of last year (Collin and my 20th anniversary, incidentally), however, I experienced something that changed my life and forced me to set out on the journey of reconciling some real regret for making such a drastic move, presumably under the influence of optimistic delusion. On that day, a parent with considerable influence and leadership in our homeschool group confronted me about Senya vocalizing about queer and trans rights in the group. Now, if you have a kid who identities as queer—gender queer or queer in their orientation—you know that the statistics are that LGBTQIA+ youth are more than 4 times as likely to attempt suicide than their peers. And you would also know that trans and nonbinary youth are 2-2.5 times more likely to experience depressive symptoms, seriously consider suicide, and attempt suicide compared to their cisgender LGBQ peers (https://www.thetrevorproject.org/resources/article/facts-about-lgbtq-youth-suicide/)

I had heard Senya confront some of these kids before, so I knew what this parent was referencing. When two cisgender, heterosexual boys were pretending to be gay, I heard Senya handle the situation with directness but not unkindly. They told them it wasn’t funny to make a joke out of someone’s orientation. When a cisgender girl told Senya that they were “always going to be a girl” and that they “needed to stop running from their true identity” Senya stood up for themself, but again, not unkindly. I know there were more occasions, and I know they probably didn’t always perfect their delivery in standing up for themself, but they were 12 and the only out queer kid in the group. So, they did their best doing a job that the most vulnerable person in a given social group shouldn’t be left to do for themself in the first place. 

So, given those stats above, and the fact that Senya was trying to be an ambassador and advocate for trans and queer rights—for themself and also for others in the group who had come out privately to them—I wasn’t about to apologize to this parent or tell Senya to tone it down. In the moment, ki when this parent was confronting me, it suddenly dawned on me: people aren’t going to understand. My kid is going to face discrimination in this world and they will be blamed for it. If this can happen in Los Angeles, a city that purports to be progressive and liberal, where can they be safe? 

It leveled me emotionally to have Senya’s identity and their attempt to make space for their existence as a trans-gender, non-binary person put beneath the level of importance of other kids’ hurt feelings or injured pride. “Senya is casting these kids as sexist, and that’s unfair” the parent wrote later in an email. Interestingly enough, another girl (the one who told Senya they’d always be a girl), called boys sexist all the time. And yet, this girl wasn’t getting singled out. 

I am going to just pause and recognize my privilege for a moment here as someone who has been able to mask and protect myself, despite my own queerness, whenever necessary to stay safe. Other more vulnerable members of society don’t have this privilege. This includes other members of the trans and non binary community and also Black, Indigenous, People of Color, and people of racial diversity. The most vulnerable members of society are those that live at intersections of these different facets of identity. It’s important that I note here that I have had the luxury of living a life where this was one of the first and formative moments of prejudice I’ve experienced on behalf of my child because they refused to mask and blend. This experience makes me realize the importance of speaking up and making space for people who are less safe to do so for themself and who do not have the option of masking. This is why it’s important to say “Black Lives Matter” or have policies around inclusivity, signs on institutions and businesses welcoming and protecting diversity, and legislation that protects the rights of vulnerable members of society. It takes saying it out loud, making it formalized, and taking a stance. Because it’s not a given. And if you think it is, it’s because you’ve been privileged enough to think that (as I was).

So, in the initial moments of this parent’s confrontation, I felt the ground beneath me fall away. My friend was next to me, with her hand on my back trying to support me, unable to find the words or actions to intervene in the conversation but sending the signal of solidarity and support by physically supporting me. I was shaking and began crying uncontrollably. I couldn’t think; I just felt bottomless grief for Senya’s journey of being misunderstood, for the shattering realization of how unjust the world was, for all I had given up to be here in Los Angeles. My heart was pounding in my ears, and images flashed across my mind of all the things I loved that I had given up to be here. With this group. The ramps that grow on the hillside in April. The bees we kept that pollinated our plants and shared their abundance of honey. Our neighbors who provided friendship and help in any pinch in which we’d find ourselves. The sunrises over the mountains I’d see from my kitchen sink window. Our pond that we’d ice skate on every February and then swim in every June. Animal friends—chickens, bunnies, a cat— we had to re-home. The chickadee who would sing to me to tell me that spring was on the way. The grief was filling me, choking me, and I couldn’t breathe. I had to leave the situation. And so I did. I went home and crawled into bed at 6:00 pm in the evening. Collin canceled our 20th anniversary dinner reservations and sat next to me in my sadness, sharing the burden of grief. 

In the following days, the parent and I went back and forth in a series of emails each trying to explain to the other our point of view. “All the kids deserve to be accepted” she wrote. Yes, but for some outliers to be included, there need to be changes made in the way we speak and think about gender to affirm their identity. Just like “All Lives Matter” minimizes or negates the specific, systemic oppression that Black individuals face, saying that all the kids’ hurt feelings carried the same weight as the one trans’ kid’s in these particular moments of ciscentric or heteronormative biases negates the specific, systemic struggle that a trans person experiences by virtue of living in a binary, cisgender society. 

By day three of email exchanges, it became clear that there was a chasm between us that could not be bridged with logic, for we each had our own. And while each of our arguments derived from different premises and resulted in different conclusions, they were both logically sound. Without empathy, there is no way across the divide of differing logic and world views. I understood that she was trying to protect the other kids from feelings of shame or judgment. I don’t think she ever understood that I was trying to keep my kid from the statistic likelihood of depression and suicide associated with their trans identity. We each had concerns; the stakes were higher for mine. And without a clear policy and uniform stance on LGBTQIA+ rights, inclusive language, and an overt mission to celebrate diversity, we could not stay in the group. In the absence of a clear, unified statement on inclusion and equity, the default is that each person’s opinion is as important as the next person’s. When it comes to social issues with this much weight and consequence, especially in light of the misalignment I was sensing about such issues, I didn’t feel that Senya would have the support they needed to be healthy. 

And so, we left the group that I had envisioned being our community for the remainder of the kids’ middle and high school years. The group that I had believed would off set the sacrifices of leaving our homestead in Vermont. 

I had to confront the grief and face the regret of the choice I had made. I had sold our home, our land, our beautiful intimate life and there was no going back. Fortunately, the only pragmatic reason we had moved here—for Collin to be physically here for the initial start up phase of his company—had gone better than we even hoped. So, that’s a win. But the life that the kids and I thought we were returning to did not pan out the way I thought it would. I tried to move back to an era, but eras aren’t geographical.

It was important for me to go through this process of grief and of reconciling how my optimistic delusion prevented me from sitting with the cost of the decision to move here. I did not allow myself to stay present with the grief of all we were leaving in Vermont because I steeled myself to make the difficult leap. This was where I went wrong. If you are making a big change, taking a big risk, or leaping for something beyond your reach—it’s important to be present with that decision while you’re doing it. You know you’re truly ready if you’re ready to stay present with the fear, the unknown, the cost, the grief and still make the decision to leap. I had to really embrace this truth prior to this idea of moving to the farm. I have a tendency to think that the answers lie in geography, when in fact, they are within us. I have spent many months soul searching and researching actual data about living here versus living in Vermont. They are both great places with a lot to offer. 

In addition to all the reasons I wrote about in my first blog post, for this season in life, I believe that moving back to Vermont and sending our kids to school is the best option for our family for now. While you cannot predict how each individual person will treat your kids, there is a different kind of peace of mind and support that comes with structural justice and policies that protect vulnerable people. The school where we plan to send Senya and Juniper, Long Trail School (LTS), has an overt inclusivity statement. They backed this statement with action when they went to bat this past year defending their star basketball player. She is a transgender girl and thus plays on the girls’ basketball team. LTS took some heat for this decision in the news and from other schools—one of which refused to play LTS’ team on anti-trans grounds. LTS held strong in their decision and support of their player and their policy that students can pick the team that best fits their gender identity. 

In contrast, we looked at several schools here, in LA, after we left the homeschool group. There was one school here that Senya was interested in attending. During their interview with the administration, Senya asked the teachers how they would handle it if someone misgendered them. The teachers said, “Well, if you come in here expecting conflict, then you might find it. It is important for people to assume the best of everyone here. These are all good students. No one would mean to hurt anybody regarding their gender, so if you don’t assume that they will, they won’t.” Essentially, this amounts to: “If you get hurt, it’s your fault.” This is a toxic attitude in general because it refuses to take accountability for one’s actions, but it is especially detrimental when there is a power differential regarding socially vulnerable members of society. Blaming the victim for standing up, speaking up, or trying to make space for their identity is harmful. Full stop. Supposed good intentions don’t justify harmful behavior.

Upon telling a friend that they planned to attend this school, Senya’s friend cautioned them (knowing they are non-binary and knowing their tendency to be vocal about trans rights). This friend informed Senya that she had known a trans student who had been expelled from this school for “disrupting the students” but in reality it was because the student, like Senya, was trans and vocal about their identity and vocal about trans rights. Parents with money and power convinced the school administration to expel the trans student. 

When we asked the same question of the school administration at LTS in Vermont, they said, “for homophobic or anti-trans comments or behaviors, we would likely give a student an in-class suspension whereby they spend their time researching and writing about LGBTQIA+ rights and the history of LGBTQIA+ rights in the United States.” 

There was no talk about intentions or goodness of people’s hearts—because that’s not what we’re talking about when we talk about standing up for justice when there is a power differential. Some of the worst injustices of history have been committed in the name of good intentions. Genocide via eugenics, the Crusades, Conquistadors, the Spanish Missions, The Carlisle Indian Industrial School…the list goes on and on. Just because people think they’re doing the right thing doesn’t mean they aren’t hurting the most vulnerable members of society. Usually they think they’re doing good and not harm because they’re thinking from their ego-centric, euro-centric perspective and not taking the time to perspective take or decenter their narrative. That doesn’t make the consequences less horrific for the people they hurt. 

I’m not under the impression that LTS will be perfect, and I know that even people who are trying their hardest make mistakes. It’s the fact that there’s a mechanism for accountability that matters to me. And it’s the fact that holistically, even on the worst days, we will have a beautiful home, a nature-based life, and an event barn to host gatherings that bring people together around issues of justice. 

I do want, however, to give a shout out to those who helped us through this difficult year. Brave Trails, the California based LGBTQIA+ youth organization has been so supportive and crucial to Senya’s success. Senya has been part of Brave Trails’ weekly Queer youth group, and they also have met with a Brave Trails therapist weekly. This has been vital for their mental health and has provided much needed social and psychological support. 

I also want to thank all the family members and friends who showed up for us. Queer aunties who adore my children. Loyal friends who took a stand for us, one of whom wrote an email to the group trying to explain the systemic nature of the social harm we had experienced. There were other friends who made time and energy to collaborate on carpooling, activities, and life in general. My niece who is in their twenties, queer, super cool, and works at the local gourmet food store has been a role model and an inspiration to both my kids. All these aforementioned people plus other family members and friends who show up monthly for a potluck. Friends from the former homeschool group made an effort to reach out and stay close even though we left the group. All the grandparents who use Senya’s pronouns. All the people who use Senya’s pronouns and just say sorry and move on when they make a mistake (by the way, that’s the most supportive way to handle an accidental misgender. Profuse apologies or anything that turns the energy around and compels the person to caretake YOUR feelings for making a mistake is unhelpful). There is no shortage of good humans here or abroad in our life, and we have been so lucky to have some of the very best in our life.

It’s just been a long road of difficult learning, especially because I leapt without really calculating the cost of what we were leaving behind. In this next move to Vermont, I am trying to stay very present with how much we do indeed have here. We will be leaving a lot of people we love and a lot of resources in that regard. I’m scared, and I think that’s important to acknowledge and keep top of mind. I also know it won’t be perfect because nothing is. Our beautiful age of homeschooling is ending, and this path in Vermont seems like a pretty good fit for who we are now and the era ahead. 

This was a difficult post to write because it articulates my personal experience, but I want to impress upon anyone reading this how not unique our story about facing discrimination regarding trans identity is. I have come to hear similar experiences from other parents of trans and nonbinary kids. Some of whom, like us, had made huge moves to be in places they thought would have the resources their kid, being gifted and exceptional, would need. There is a huge overlap in the Venn diagram of identity traits where queerness and giftedness overlap. Therefore, if you move for giftedness without knowing that the resources will also be supportive of queerness, your kid can end up lonely and hurt. Fortunately, we have found some communities that make space for both; Talent Development Institute in Vermont, for example, is a camp for gifted kids, but it also is extremely inclusive of LGBTQIA+ people. There is a girls dorm floor, a boys dorm floor, and an all-gender floor. It’s accommodations like this that make all the difference for someone whose gender identity doesn’t fit into the binary.  

This is a critical moment in history; while LGBTQIA+ rights are moving forward in some ways (Thailand recently legalized same sex marriage) 2024 was a record breaking year for anti-trans legislation in the United States. Donald Trump has already made it clear that, should he become President again, he, promises to roll back LGBTQIA+ rights. In conjunction with the Heritage Foundation (a conservative think tank) he will propose Project 2025, which details a host of anti-trans legislation and actions. This includes denying federal funding to institutions that don’t discriminate against transgender students (on the grounds that protecting LGBTQIA+ rights equates to violating the rights of people with certain religious beliefs), deleting the terms “sexual orientation and gender identity” from all federal rules, and for prohibiting teachers from affirming trans students. One of the worst proposals in Project 2025 equates transgender identity with pornography and states that it should be outlawed (that’s especially rich coming from a guy who, not only had sex with a porn star, but then paid her to remain quiet about it). This proposal suggests that librarians, teachers, and administrative staff that support transgender students or transgender ideology should be registered as sex offenders. These are his plans. You can read more at 

https://www.them.us/story/lgbtq-trump-trans-second-term

https://www.forbes.com/sites/saradorn/2024/05/10/trump-promises-rollback-on-trans-rights-heres-what-hes-said

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/us/politics/trump-transgender-rights.html

I want you to also take away something important: it’s often the parents who have the problem with accepting trans identities. Kids are, by nature, open hearted and open minded. It’s the parents who get worried about their children’s “innocence” (aka fragility) getting threatened by understanding trans identity, issues of justice, or having difficult but important conversations around social inequity that exists. It’s the parents who hold harmful views like, “well, boys and girls shouldn’t have sleepovers together” rather than talking to their kids about sex, the true meaning of consent, mutual respect, and how to communicate your own boundaries and listen to others’. Genitals don’t equal gender and neither gender nor genitals equal sexual orientation. 

I know not everyone is informed on all the nuances of these issues because the nature of privilege is that you can opt out of caring if it’s not affecting you. But I believe we can do better, be better, and co-create a society that holds complexity beyond the binary. I haven’t given up hope, remember? Indomitable optimism. But sometimes, optimism must be tempered with reality. And in this case, it’s important to hold the injustices that exist while keeping an eye on the hopeful outcome. On Monday Senya will find out if they got an internship with Outright Vermont, an LGBTQIA + organization, as a youth organizer and activist. If they don’t get it this year, they will apply again until they do. They are a born and raised activist; it’s their calling, their identity, and all hell can’t stop them. 

Sometimes hope is at the bottom of a murky quagmire of hurt, disappointment, and grief. It’s not always a pleasant journey to dive down to the bottom to retrieve it, but the process is necessary sometimes. 

And as for me, with hope back in hand, I believe we can shoot the moon. 

A few weeks ago, I had a dream that I was battling a shadow creature in a setting much like Moria where Gandalf fought the Balrog. And as the creature was coming toward me, I was fighting defensively, getting backed closer and closer to the edge of a precipice. Then I heard the voice of a child from the future who was watching this scene unfold ask a wiser, older figure, “Why is she so afraid?” And the wiser, older character said, “Oh, because this was before she knew she could fly.” 

And then once I heard that, I remembered I could fly. I was no longer afraid. I dove off the precipice and flew away. 

What was that moment of realization in my dream, when I remembered I could fly? It was remembering that I am part of so much more that exists outside of myself, time, life, or death.

When we get bogged down in the smallness of our own, individual life, we feel the finiteness of our individuality. Our fear of our own mortality keeps us from flying. Our fear of failure keeps us from boldly acting with certainty.

To act boldly and with certainty, we must remember that we are all part of something bigger that goes on long after the finitude of our own, small life diminishes. When we change form and go back into everything, we become part of all things again. This is true on a material level, hence the Thich Nhat Hanh wisdom of “the garbage becomes the rose.” One can find a whole spiritual path from composting. Death becomes life which becomes death which becomes life… 

When one truly comprehends this, it is possible to transcend the possibilities of one, small lifetime; it becomes possible to reach toward the infinite when we tap into the reality that we are already part of it.

This was the revelation that I got when I got covid in August of 2022. I struggled with feeling absolute agony for days without much respite because I could barely sleep due to the pain in my lungs, my muscles, and my head. Eventually, by day 3, I surrendered to the virus and asked it if there was something it wanted to teach me. As I did this, I made my peace with the pain, with death, and with the fact that I can’t control life and death. The equanimity of all things became real to me in that moment as did the reality that we are all individuated forms but made of the same creatively powerful stuff as each other, the plants, the animals, the water, the stars. 

Regardless of specific origin stories and explanations for how everything came to be, the revelation of interconnectedness still applies. Whether you believe in the Big Bang or another creation story, the deep, universal truth points to a reality where everything came from something. And right now the universe is still expanding (individuating) but someday everything will become a singularity again. 

Whether you put this in scientific terms or poetic, metaphorical terms an underpinning that one can take away from this revelation is that—while your one wild and precious life is special in its own expression—it’s also not the source of life itself. Life Itself is what endures, and we are but a brief and unique expression of that life. Transcending our own, individual perspective allows us to realize the interconnectedness of all beings and to trust in the process of Life Itself. 

When we take heart and confidence that we are part of something much bigger than just our one, fleeting mortal lifespan, we can fly (metaphorically, please don’t jump off any precipices upon reading).

I think sometimes there is a tendency for those of us who were steeped in the literal truth of a religious worldview to think that there’s one, right or best path. If we miss that path, if we deviate from it, then we are doomed to ruin. There is a great distrust of one’s self baked into fundamentalism and a sense that the only goodness is something that is other than you but very specifically not you. There is a deep chasm in fundamentalism between nature and humans. 

I disagree.

I believe that humans are part of nature. Furthermore, I think that, based on the natural world and my observations of it, nature has a deep intelligence. Somehow acorns have all the programming within them to become an oak tree. Somehow baby chicks who have never encountered a predator know to run for cover when they hear a shriek of a hawk in the sky. There is a deep, innate wisdom within all of nature, and this extends to the human soul or consciousness as well. 

Many spiritual paths subscribe to this innate wisdom for humanity—an inner light, an inner Buddha, being created in a Divine likeness, etc. The distinction I’m making here is that I comprehend this inner wisdom to be part of our natural birthright. We are born into the sacred experience of having innate wisdom by virtue of being alive. We are part of the universe’s great wisdom because we are here; this is distinct from believing that humans are separate from nature, that we have to earn this wisdom through faith or actions, or that it comes from outside of nature. 

Furthermore, when we believe that we have this sacred birthright, we also can see that the current of Life isn’t just toward destruction and ruin. Decay and decomposition can be frightening if you don’t stay with it long enough to see what happens next. But what happens next, if you wait long enough to observe it, is new life. It’s a cycle, a circle, and we are all part of it. When we get caught up in the literal, the very individual level of a particular existence—then yes, it can be disheartening. And of course, so much of our life experience and our consciousness can feel so individual—especially when we don’t take the time and make the energy to connect with the bigger, transcendent whole of Life, of all that is. 

How does this mindset affect our lives here and now? If we stop trying to preserve the literal, individual level of life—the here and now—and allow the bigger processes of life and death to happen, we will live in more harmony with the rest of the natural world. Humans developed plastic (and all the horrors that come with it) because we can’t accept the impermanence of all things. When we let go of our need to self-preserve we allow death, decomposition, and new life to occur. 

Another take away from this mindset—the interconnectedness of all beings—is that we will care for other non-human forms of life with more reverence. When we view ourselves as part of the natural world, rather than above it, we relate with mutual care and respect to all beings. When we hold nature as our sacred source of Life, we don’t frack, litter, deplete, or exploit. We love, we nurture, we relate, we thank. 

In sum, when we let go of our ego and realize the interconnectedness of all things, we transcend our need to self preserve. We can live freely and more fully as our individual selves, and we will also love and protect the Sacred. 

There is freedom waiting for you
On the breezes of the sky
And you ask “What if I fall?”
Oh but my darling, What if you fly?

–Erin Hanson

I grew up in an era before iPhones, before the internet, and before helicopter parenting. In other words, I was one of the lucky ones.

In the summer of 1986, my family moved “below the canal” (south of the Delaware stretch of the Chesapeake Canal) to a developing neighborhood that was being built on a house by house basis. We were one of only a handful of houses that had been built by the time we moved in, so most of the lots were just wildflowers and meadows.  Outside of the neighborhood site, there was nothing but farmland for miles.

I was eager (read: desperate) to make new friends. I had preschool friends up until that point, but preschool was only half day back then; so most of my life was still spent at home. My sisters were both 4 and 7 years older than I was, so they were gone most of the day. My mom only let me play in the fenced 1/4 acre backyard of our old house up until we moved below the canal, so turning 5 and living in our new house meant new found freedom, with friends, outside. 

RC Peoples was the name of the construction company that was building the our new development. A point of fact that always enraged my dad, RC Peoples took every new homeowner’s topsoil before their move-in date and removed it to a big, empty lot in the center of the neighborhood. For my dad, it meant for years he tried to grow grass to no avail. To me, it meant: the dirt hill. 

Now the “dirt hill” spanned several acres and it was just diagonally across the street from my front yard. It was basically a small, Delawarean mountain range. If you know the topography of Delaware, you know that phrase is oxymoronic. But for all of my 5 year old intents and purposes, it may well have been my own personal Himalayas. 

I was thrilled to have so much glorious space to explore and play outside. Now all I needed was some friends who wanted to share adventures. 

After a failed foray or two into trying to befriend some exclusive cousins who lived down the street, I had almost given up hope on making any neighborhood friends. 

But then one day, a flicker of movement caught my eye from out my second story bedroom window. Across the street, a white station wagon pulled into the empty 2 acre lot. Suddenly, 5 kids, all under the age of 13, emerged. It was like a clown car, but instead of creepy clowns, it was full of friends for life!!!

I flew down the stairs, out my door, and ran over to meet them. “Hi, I’m Lindsay. I live across the street” I said to the mom, who was holding a baby (future friend in the making and their 6th child). 

She went on to tell me that her husband was going to build them a house on that lot. 

And over the course of the next year or so, that is exactly what he did. As they were building it and ever after during my childhood there, I had a pack of friends from that family. 

We hit it off immediately. They had moved from Chester (an urban area of Pennsylvania), and they were thrilled to have unfettered access to real, unadulterated dirt. A seasoned country girl myself at this point (I had a couple month’s jump start on them), I showed them the ropes. 

As the months went by, more kids moved into the neighborhood and joined our pack. We were very inclusive as those early days with the mean cousins left a mark on me. I always felt that I had been elected as the unofficial leader of my neighborhood pack, so I tried to infuse my friend group with the values I held dear. Inclusivity, authenticity, and some good, old fashioned anti-government sentiments I had heard from my dad were my hallmarks. I remember complaining to my friends that the government “had no right to brainwash people into thinking that pink was for girls and blue was for boys. Color has no gender.” I guess I was also trying to throw in some anti-capitalism. Once I symbolically ripped up a dollar bill and threw it to the wind saying, “we will not be slaves to money! We will live freely and fully and never bow to the dollar!” Or something along those lines. I remember one of the kids ran around collecting the pieces and taped it back together. But most of them nodded in agreement (probably to hurry me along so we could get on with our planned game of kickball).

We created and shared a world together, all outside.

We made the dirt hill our haunt. We built forts. We swam in the giant holes that the backhoes had dug (I’m sure this was unsafe, but we survived). We picked berries and ate them (some were toxic, most were not but our rule was one of anything wouldn’t kill us…except mushrooms). We climbed trees and went exploring for acres and acres through the neighborhood and the surrounding farm land. The land surrounding the dirt hills became a make shift baseball field. All the kids in the neighborhood would gather and play. Sometimes fights would ensue. In fact, sometimes, the “game” was essentially fighting for fun (throwing mud balls made from the stolen top soil) at each other until there was only one last person standing, mostly uninjured and the least muddy. 

Another “game” we’d play was one where we’d see who could ride their bike the longest and farthest with their eyes closed without crashing…or, more likely, before crashing. We usually had the presence of mind to designate one kid as the look out for cars. In the event that there was a car, their job was to yell “CAR!!!” so that everyone would open their eyes. Then there was another game on our bikes called “crash landing” whereby we’d ride our bikes as fast as possible down a straight stretch of the neighbor street, and then—at full speed—jump off the bike and crash with as much pizzazz as possible. Of course we’d all rate the crash on a 10 point rating scale. When we got even close to bored, we’d make up imaginary stories and role play as characters in those stories. We’d put on dance performances for our parents in the backyard to Paula Abdul’s hit album, Forever Your Girl. And in the rare event that no one was in the mood for any of the aforementioned activities, we had a shared imaginary friend named Synergy. We communicated to her in claps.

Day after day, throughout the whole school year, we’d play outside as much as possible. We’d get home from school, get a snack, and run outside. From sun up until sun down in the summer, we’d play our hearts out. We’d only go inside when our parents would call us inside for mandatory meals—and then eventually, for bedtime. At dusk, in the summer time, you could hear parents hollering their kids’ names from porches all throughout the neighborhood. When your name was called, you jumped up without ceremony and said, “see you tomorrow!” and then go inside, bone tired, dusty, and with a heart full from living the best day of your childhood–until the next day when that day would be as good or even better.

When I think of the deep connection that I have to nature and to people, I know that a lot of it comes from those days with those friends. 

When we lived in Vermont, my kids had a similar experience with their neighbor friend (if you call a half mile hike over the cobble to her homestead ‘neighboring’). The first time Addy came to our house to play, she emerged from the woods with a chicken in a diaper. Absolutely legendary. A lifelong friendship was born.

A couple years and many adventures later, during the height of covid, the three of them bubbled up and spent months upon months, all year, building a world of their own outside. The fall of 2020, they built “Kidlantis” a settlement at an undisclosed location somewhere on either our land or Addy’s where they built shelters and would keep a bonfire burning all day. They’d come home at night, covered in soot, faces beaming. I knew they were living the best possible childhood. They’d come inside some days in the winter to fill empty milk jugs with gallons of water. They’d load up their sleds and haul the water to the top of the mountain. It was cold enough that winter that upon contact with the snowy road, the water would freeze solid. They built an ice slide this way to make sledding go even faster. Eric, (who I mentioned in my first article) would plow the hill just right for sledding at the steepest and best stretch. He’d make snow banks on the sides of our road so, essentially, they had a bobsled track. Some winter days after a fresh snow, they’d track coyotes through the woods to their dens. Other cold winter days, they’d ice skate on the pond. 

In the summer, they’d swim in that same pond, build forts, play with the animals (once there was a bunny wedding), make zip lines for their guinea pigs (no animals were harmed), or occasionally go exploring in the nearby (a mile away) barn to look for new barn kittens. Some days, Collin and I would build a bonfire at 9:00 at night (it stays light there late in the summer because of how far north it is), and we’d sit by the firelight *still* waiting for our kids to come traipsing back home, emerging through the woods with smiles and bug bites and dirt all over their limbs. Sometimes we wouldn’t know much about how they spent their day until was safely in the past— that they had fallen down ice cliffs, gotten lost, or that someone had gotten mildly injured. Getting into scrapes and getting back out of them is some of the best work one can do in childhood. 

It was heart wrenching to say goodbye to Addy. 

When we moved back here to Topanga, I didn’t know how they would keep their nature connection or if they’d have any way to share adventures outside with friends.

And then one day we learned that another homeschooling family with two kids exactly my kids’ ages lived across the busy Topanga Canyon Boulevard from our house. As it turns out, there is a tunnel right down at our creek that goes under the boulevard and comes out right onto these friends’ quiet, little street. For the past year and a half, our kids have gone on to have adventures outside, building forts, exploring the woods and trees, and creating a world for themselves of adventure and beauty in the Oak Woodlands of Topanga. For the last three months, the boulevard was closed and the traffic was greatly diminished—thus leaving the primary song of the canyon sung by frogs and birds rather than Lamborghinis and crotch rockets. The four canyon kids made the most of these quiet months, spending even more time outside traveling back and forth between the tunnel and roaming their territory. But then, the boulevard opened just as these friends moved out of the canyon.

When I think of all these years of my kids’ childhoods so far, I am grateful that they have those wild, unsupervised nature experiences deep in their beings. No matter what trials other phases of life dishes out for them, that deep nature connection and those deep friendships forged in childhood—through all those adventures on the land in Vermont and Topanga—will serve as a deep well of trust in themselves and the process of life itself.  

Likewise, for myself, there’s a deep and satisfying connection I will always and only get from spending the bulk of my days outside, living in relationship with the land. I crave a relationship with nature where I live my days immersed in it, spend my time working with it, and invest my energy in relating to and with the plants, animals, water, dirt, and rocks…it connects me to the truest part of myself.

There are crossroads in life where one must decide what the core guiding values are at the center of their souls. Love and nature are my Polaris and Southern Cross. With them, I find my way.

May you find your stars, even if all other lights go out, to guide you home.