Nurture by Nature


Rhiannon and I took the hour-long drive to the White Tank Mountains near Surprise, Arizona, northwest of Phoenix. She spent the hour on the "phone" (a plastic cellphone with princesses on it) gossiping to her friend Madison about Hannah Montana, her recent concert, and then she and her friend sang songs to each other. On the drive up, Rhiannon was transfixed by an enormous baby holding a tractor. This was a trompe l'oiel 3-D painting of a tot and was affixed to a plowed field. It was quite possibly the most bizarre example of American folk art either Rhiannon or I had ever seen. Unfortunately at 65 mph I was unable to grab a shot with the iPhone.

Rhiannon had dragged her feet on this trip, protesting a bit, wanting to stay home and play dress-up on the computer and later to go swimming. But after waffles and blackberries, she had softened up to the idea, especially with the promise of swimming after the trip. So we had a nice drive into the desert, relatively cool at 75F (it would gain 10 degrees over the afternoon), passing fields and then into the mountains which, in our end of the Earth, rise up immediately from nothing, from hardpan, as if pushed frmo below by some demonic hand. In late-summer, the lands are blasted and barren, but now, in April, on the cusp of heat, everything is green. The cacti are flowering; the bees are busy, and Rhiannon's "ticklebugs" are beginning to thin out because of wind and heat.

In the welcome center (a trailer) for White Tank Regional Park, we were directed to Black Rock Trail and Waterfall Trail, a four-mile round-trip suitable for little legs. I had packed lots of water and plenty of snacks (better for hiking than a big lunch), and off we went, winding our way up above the valley, down through a wash, and up to hundreds of petroglyphs, Rhiannon on my shoulders for much of the trip.

While we sat in the shade to eat crackers, we had our first encounter with the Loud Family led by a misinformed fatman, bald, goateed, tattoed, and happy to share is lore of the land with the rest of humanity within a half-mile radius. From him we learned that people millions of years ago had sculpted the rocks that we see now, making them round via stone axes and other tools made of nothing but rock. We also learned from him how to climb rocks, how to let your dog frolic in the depths of the only water source for miles, and how to discipline your child for playing in the water by giving him a time-out, facing the cliff wall, for as many minutes as years of age. Truly, this man was a savant of the natural world, and of parenting. I wondered where his drinking water was.

Rhiannon and I sat quietly, observing this loud man and his loud entourage of family as they blitzed through the park like locusts, devouring his words without question, dumb cattle in the desert. Now, I, like Edward Abbey, was thrilled that these well-fed Americans had gotten out of their automobiles and trekked two miles to see the beauty of what would be a raging waterfall and river in the middle of a summer storm. I applaud them for leaving behind their sodas and cheeseburgers to come here. But at the same time, the land must be shared, and there is an etiquette of the wild to be observed. And an etiquette for children, too, in that Rhiannon desperately wanted to climb the rocks overlooking the pool we found, but could not for all of the people here on a Sunday no doubt because the Arizona Cardinals were not on television.

So Rhiannon and I shared snacks, drank our water, and quietly observed loud mammals in action. When one loud family left, a quiet family arrived at the pool, but they had brought Loud Gramma with them. Gramma was terrified of the children dehydrating here, right in the immediate vicinity of water, albeit one befowled by the dog of the previous Loud Family. Children were to stay put, no climbing, no splashing, drink the water from the bottle, watch out for the slippery rocks, watch out, watch out, watch out! I remember my first time in the wilderness, the true wild, and remembered being cautious, but also curious, and it made me sad that these children were being indoctrinated into the fear of wild places. Granted, nature is amoral. It will kill the unprepared. But one can either face the wilderness with fear, or one can be prepared and can meet nature on its own terms. So here Rhiannon and I observed the next generation of air conditioned youth, brought into the wild as an object lesson that we should fear that which cannot sustain us because we are ignorant of survival. Despite the over-protection, this family stayed as Gramma was afraid to go back into the sun, back into the hell of 80F sunshine which her grandkids would most likely be flocking to in ten years, illicit booze in-hand, looking for a spot of beach. Again, I applaud the pluck and courage of this loud Gramma and her silent, miserable crew, yet am saddened that the message of the trip was to stay home. See? You could die out here! I wonder if they escaped an auto accident on their return to civilization.

Now, readers of this blog might be wondering where Rhiannon is in all of this. She has been sitting quietly on rocks, playing with grasshoppers, chasing geckos, touching flowers, avoiding other insects, munching snacks, and generally enjoying herself under the canopy of blue. On the way down from the pool which, once she reached the water, fled because of small, flying insects, she said to me,

"DAD!"

"Yes, Rhiannon?"

"I didn't think I would like this, but this is really great! Can I climb a rock?"

"Of course."

I put her up on a boulder with a manageable angle, and she made the journey up its face, smearing her sneakers against the rock, hands finding holds too small for my big fingers. She was thrilled when she reached the top.

"Dad! I did it!"

I clapped for her.

"How do I get down?"

This is the question that has haunted me as a novice mountaineer. I love going up. I am petrified of coming down. I am fearless in leading the pitch up the slope, picking the route and just burning up whatever peak I choose to climb. But once I turn around, I get slow, cautious to a fault, and it takes me ages to pick my way down again. I'm not afraid of heights, just at what happens at the end of a fall. Rhiannon, though, still has courage in nature that is borne from inexperience. She's never tumbled down a slope, missed a foothold, or wondered if the talus slope she was on would stop sliding before the cliff's edge. For her, getting down is practical but not scary, so she turns onto her back and crabwalks down the boulder, ending with a few scoots on her long pants, jumping off the boulder into space, landing in my arms, laughing her head off in mid-flight. Such absolute, unshakeable faith and trust that dad will catch her almost makes my eyes water, and I know that there will be a first time when I am not there for her as she is flying, slave to gravity, and she will hit whatever rock awaits her body, whether it be a new love lost or a lost grip on the quest for the summit somewhere. I realize that she will be on her own on the trail somewhere, and all I can do is prepare her for anything. She has a quick, creative mind. She'll survive. But still I worry. I am an average parent.

Down from the mountain, Rhiannon plays in the playground with a gaggle of Mexican-American children, two of whom are named -- I am not making this up -- Ben and Jerry. They are FAT. Rhiannon is gracious as always with new friends. She calls non-white people "brown", which they are to her. "That brown girl was pretty," she says. And she's right. And to Rhiannon, "brown" is a descriptor but not a label. She is speaking Spanish to them, and they reply in English. She plays and they play, all in the same game together, one set of universal rules.

Playing done, we return to the trailer to buy rocks for Rhiannon. She fills a small, black velvet sack with polished stones, galena and tourquoise, amethyst and quartz. She chooses a piece of pyrite for a dollar, and she is rich. My father would do the same for me, feeding my geologist habit, and I adored him for it. I still have every rock he ever bought me, and kept every specimen we ever found together. Those were our best days, straddling a Texas limestone wall, chipping away at the Earth, or descending into its many mouths, entertained by minerals. It is my lasting shame that I could not excel in advanced mathematics; that failure follows me every day when I wish I was working outside in the field, and then back in the lab, a man in nature. Rhiannon is showing aptitude with numbers, doing addition and subtraction in her head as I never could. Who knows what she will be once grown, but she is showing a love for the out-of-doors already, and that is something I will encourage for as long as I am breathing.

Rhiannon, satisfied with her loot, allows me to carry her on my shoulders about half a mile down another track, the Goat Camp Trail, which winds six more miles into a deep canyon. I'll likely return by myself later in the year to explore. Rhiannon is pretending to feed the fairies who live in the moss atop rocks along the trail. She makes a "shh"-ing sound and tells me that she is feeding them milk from her finger. At five, she is still half in the world hidden from adults. I think sometimes she is an ambassador to that world to let them know that they will be fine, that we are generally good as a species. Rhiannon means it, too, and at this young age has become an empath as well as ombudsman on behalf of people. She just does what she does, is a kind child with a keen observance of what is fair and right. Sometimes it seems like she is raising herself; all I can do is drive her around, carry her when she tires, feed her when she hungers, and tell her stories. Perhaps this is enough for this child.

Rhiannon is quiet on the way home. She is tired, happy, and thoughtful. She looks for the big baby painting off of the highway. She looks at the desert. The cracked window makes her blond hair fly all around. She is buckled in, but free at the same time. Halfway home I put in a CD by the Shins, Wincing the Night Away, and as the first track unspools, she asks if this is a Beatles record.

"No, this is the Shins. They sometimes sound like the Beatles."

She loves melody, not noise. She loves emotion instead of precision. And she is satisfied with this choice even though the lead singer is male. We get all the way up through "Sea Legs", a '70s-inspired bit of Moog-flavored melancholy, and all of sudden we are home. Rhiannon brightens, extracting herself from the car, diligently collecting her hat, backpack, rocks. Swimming is next, and she is all for pink, Hannah Montana, candy. The mountains are far away, but as with things you love, distance makes no difference in how you love them, and how deep that love can be.

Rhiannon. Cute.

Andrew (Papa)