I know, I'm showing my age (which is considerable) by referencing this particular bit of 70's kids tv, but nearly half a century on it's a phrase that still comes to mind whenever I think about getting outside. I wasn't especially taken with the great outdoors when I was a kid. I grew up on a very nice council estate in Milton Keynes, which had its charms, but was not exactly a rural idyll. It's a city that's famous for having concrete cows, after all, though I will defend those bovine beauties with a passion.
All this to say that I loved the idea of the countryside, but I tended towards an indoor interpretation of it. Through drawing and reading I immersed myself in wild woods and outdoor adventure with great avarice; from Swallows and Amazons to Finn Family Moomintroll, I was steeped in it, but my world was more often an interior one. A terrible teenage family camping holiday in the the Lake District threatened to put me off for good (I still have occasional flashbacks to forced yomping up Scafell and sleeping in a sodden sleeping bag), but slowly, slowly in adulthood I finally fell in love with the English countryside. Now I live in a quiet village and, driven by a love of photography and a need to have my head scrubbed clean by the wind occasionally, I love to spend time outdoors, just walking and being.
I also have a daughter and I don't want her to wait to find out what's out there. I want her to know that joy now, that freedom, that feeling of connection to the seasons and the cycles. Not that I think my time was wasted indoors, drawing, reading and imagining, but to have the magic of a childhood spent in nature? That really is something. So, we are helping her to learn to love the countryside she's growing up in. We take her out to play as often as we can and we pack her off each day to a forest kindergarten. She spends hours come rain, snow or shine, soaking up the world and all she needs to know through wild play and exploration. Like me, she is all about stories and pictures, she draws loads and gets lost in her imagination, but she is a little wildling at heart and has an ease in the outdoors that I envy. She's already steeped in country lore and has a love of it in her bones.
This then, is an exhortation, to make sure that being out in nature and experiencing it at first hand becomes more than just a tradition for you and your family; make it a habit and start it early. One note of caution though - having banged on so much about the joys of the wild, little wonder our girl now wants to get out in it, whatever the weather. We are allowed occasional afternoons of films and fires, but family Rainy Day Walks have now become a custom, the more dramatic the deluge the better. Be careful what you wish for...
