Riverfront Living

Today, the Mississippi started to rise so high that if it goes up a couple more feet, we are going to have a very wet basement. How exciting! One of the few (IMO) perks of renting is that if that happens, it's only my problem to the extent that my stuff down there, which already smells like mildew, will have to be moved upstairs. I am also happy to report that the landlord took over the front room of the basement with his stuff (and that is the only room that doesn't smell like mildew) but his will be the first to get wet if the river continues going up!

Anyway, it's very exciting living on the edge of one of the biggest rivers in the world.

Last year, when I was in the depths of situational depression (which felt like regular depression, but as I suspected it went away when I changed my situation by moving), a fabulous friend of mine sent me an awesome book called The Power Path, which among other great tips on how to gain power, recommends first and foremost going to nature, because it says all shamen know that you go to something more powerful than yourself to get power. For example, the Mississippi River. And I *do* feel much more powerful (a.k.a. happy) since we moved here. The river feeds my soul.

Anyway, it also happens to be a great place to live for unschooler kids, who have no shortage of things to watch going up and down the river. Plus there is a public fishing dock in our front yard, and a very busy train track out back. And even a drawbridge, which goes up and down several times a day in the summer months, can be seen by the edge of the property.

I sure do wish I could post photos, but Ottar broke the camera again. :(

Unschooling in Small Towns

Well, thankfully I had a revelation lately, one day when chatting with a new friend of mine, and we got to chatting about various towns in the Midwest that might be better for unschooling in, and Ashland, Wisconsin came up. Now I know that moving to Ashland would not solve all my problems, but a lightbulb when off in my head - aha! That is what is missing from my life! Outdoor recreation people/activities! And we've been looking at land for about 10 years, my husband and I, and we've almost exclusively looked in Southern WI and MN, because that is where he has been thinking he'd like to live, because there is great visibility for storm-watching, and there is no Lake Superior (one of my favorite things in the world) to "mess up" the weather.

So we went up to Ashland last weekend, just to see if I would feel more comfortable there, and the city itself definitely could use a little beautification, though not too much more than the one I'm in (Viroqua). But the exciting thing was that there were BIKE TRAILS. And there is a giant lake!! And a REAL COFFEE SHOP!!! Wow!!! And ads up for drumming, martial arts, outdoor recreation for children, and various other things I can't remember. But they were exciting.

Anyway, my revelation is that if I'm not going to be in a big city, I need to be in a town that at least offers the kinds of things I am passionate about. Duh, right? Well, I guess I didn't realize how un-passionate the rest of the U.S. population is about things like public gathering spaces and outdoor recreation. Thank God I have now seen the light. Now to figure out what I'm going to do about it.

What makes a Magical Childhood?

Playing in the leaves at Wildcat Mountain State Park last fall

Camping with unschooler friends on our month-long tour of Minnesota State Parks in June, 2008

With Bubbie on the North Shore in 2007

Ezri at Minnehaha Falls when he was only 2!

A couple of years ago I was on an unschooler chatlist where someone proposed the question, "Do you think your childhood was magical, and if so, what was magical about it?"

It was amazing - every person who responded said that what was magical was time spent in nature and/or time spent on vacations.

I love that!

On vacation, of course, time slows down - everyone can be "present" and you are *supposed* be hanging out together, being idle or having new experiences.

And in nature. . . well, it's just a universal experience that we need because of being human beings, having spent 99.9% of our history living in tribal situations, where being outdoors was the way of life.

When I think of the most magical experiences of *my* childhood, what immediately comes to mind are things like these:

-playing on the beach in the Gulf of Mexico
-riding horseback through Wyoming
-watching a thunderstorm roll in over Lake Minnetonka
-going over a waterfall on my butt at the bottom of the Grand Canyon
-climbing the tree in my front yard
-playing for hours by the lake
-snorkeling in Hawaii
-jumping over waves on the shore of Lake Superior
-playing on my dome climber jungle gym
-playing in mud puddles on our gravel driveway
-sitting by a campfire
-finding a "treasure buried by pirates" in the sand dunes
-listening to John Denver on the 8-track in my dad's boat
-water tubing with friends
-sledding, building snowmen and forts, and having snowball fights

Aah! There is one exception - I think that my Christmases seemed magical when I was a child, and those were neither outdoors nor vacations. But in a way they were - the fire in the fireplace and everyone gathered and slowed down, relaxed and having a great time - just like on vacation.

Isn't it interesting? I'd love to hear other people comment on what they think was magical about *their* childhoods.

I think that a lot of the reason that I'm so obsessed with going on vacation to "nature" places, getting my kids outdoors, and wanting rural property is all because of these kinds of memories.

But if other people have other kinds of magical childhood experiences, I'd like to hear those, too!

(Interestingly, I have just put this question to my 6.5 year-old and he says that his most magical memories are of Papa and me using magical means (magic leaf, magic wand) to make marshmallows appear in his hot chocolate. Hmmm!)

Only a month late on these Florida Pix

In December we drove down to Florida because we had free lodgings in the panhandle, on St. George Island. It was amazing! Has to be one of the best places ever to take your kids, if you're me!

I Know Soulemama's Secret

The adventure begins!

The careful collection of sticks.

Ezra shows off his stick-breaking abilities.

Nonie always accompanies us on our neighborhood outings!

This is the [very delayed - as today there is a blizzard outside our window!] first of a series of days wherein I pretend to be Soulemama. Why? Because everyone always says Soulemama makes them feel guilty and inadequate, and that they can't do that much cool stuff and have that much amazing fun with their kids.

Well, folks, I know her secret. And I will tell it to you.

The secret is the camera.

Ok, I have only a scruffy little cheap digital hardly-any-megapixel camera that is actually my husband's - and he takes it with him to work most days.

BUT. . .

Next time you're feeling blue, just try this: Take your kids out somewhere, and bring your camera along. Lonely? No. . . you can't be because you know that everything you are doing is now ART. And it will make you feel like SOMEBODY SPECIAL when you post about it on your blog. No matter if your kids are not wearing cute, handmade clothes. . . although all the better if they are! Of course you must make sure you are doing something outdoorsy and natural. . . or possibly, crafty.

Please notice how taking the pictures above totally changed my mood. The truth is, we went out "stick-finding" only because I thought I was going to lose my mind if I stayed in the house for one more second with my kids. But as soon as we got going and I made it into a photo safari, the whole thing became festive and even slightly hilarious.

Thank you, Soulemama, for raising my Vibe.

Why We Unschool - Part II (or: Born to Learn)

Ottar (at 11 mo.) taking in the world around him!

Well, I received a complaint about my previous explanation of why we unschool. I thought it was pretty good, myself. But I guess I'll try to be a little more thorough.

I was inspired to give a better explanation by the woman who does the blog Unschool Days, which I wrote about this summer. Here is the link to her explanation of why *she* is an unschooler. It's an excellent explanation, and I already posted that link this summer, too.

However, I went through a semi-rabid anti-school phase a few years ago (due to reflecting upon my own educational experiences - my kids have never been to school or preschool), and there are many, many excellent books, essays, and YouTube videos about what is wrong with schools. Now I really just prefer to focus on what is so cool about "lifelong learning" (another euphemism for unschooling) because why fight against something when you can just forge ahead happily? The school system is falling apart on its own, and almost everyone can see that anyway. I love that people continue to expose the underlying creepiness in the public school system, and in the idea of school in general. I will continue to provide links and share books and essays, but I don't feel like going into exhaustive detail myself.

In any case, my favorite explanation of why we are unschooling is because there is so much inspiration in life. The minute my first son was born, he was taking in so much information. He was a very alert baby, watching the world, absorbing information, etc. He didn't need anybody to teach him anything - he just needed to be provided with rich experiences, such as lots of social settings, lots of quiet time in nature, lots of places and spaces to play, lots of sensory experiences, lots of carrying, lots of love, etc.

I had already decided to unschool him before he was a year old, as previously mentioned. And last fall when it came time for lots of other five-year-olds to start kindergarten, it really struck me how ridiculous it seemed to use kindergarten as anything other than a day-care (for working parents) because he was so clearly able to learn everything he needed to know just by living life.

I do tend to tell people in sort of a flip way, "I don't teach him anything, he just teaches himself." But what I really mean is that I tell him the answers when he asks me questions, I help facilitate his learning by looking for resources that support his interests, and I bring a lot of my own interests and values into his life by living my life and including him in it, or by purposely bringing things into his life that I value.

Whew! There, have I explained it well enough now?

A Day at the Park with Papa!

Kenny found this awesome rock-climbing park today, in the next town over. I am soooo excited! I love rock-climbing and allowing kids to climb on real, genuine natural rocks instead of those plastic ones that are all the rage these days.

Raising Hikers

Ottar loves to do everything without pants!




















I am a little bit obsessed with making sure my kids bond with their Earth Matrix*, I will admit. And I am proud to say that in the past month they have often spent up to nine hours straight running around the Minneapolis or St. Paul parks or nature areas. Usually it's more like 5 or 6, but still - that's pretty crazy, I think.

Anyway, we also went up north over Memorial Day weekend - to Naniboujou Lodge where we have been going since I was about 14 years old. My dad planned a couple of hikes - one to Devil's Kettle, which is kind of like a waterfall but is maybe officially a gorge?? Hmmm. . . need to find that out. Anyway, the next day we did one of my favorite hikes, which is to Eagle Mountain, south of Grand Marais. All in all the kids (and their same-aged cousins) hiked seven miles over two days. I say, that is pretty impressive! I actually had to talk Ottar out of taking a fork in the path that would have led him another 12 miles on the Superior Hiking Trail (but oh, we do have big plans to hike that someday!).

Both of my kids are very at home in the woods or on a beach, etc., but especially Ottar, either because of his age or his temperament (or his proximity to the ground?) loves to stop and observe various things along the trail before moving on.

I guess maybe all that running around the parks during the day, and all the crazy, crazy biking they've also been doing (soon to be the subject of another post) has paid off because I think they now both have Legs of Steel.

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*Bonding with the Earth Matrix is a concept I learned about in Joseph Chilton Pearce's Magical Child, one of my favorite books. He says first the child must bond with the Mother Matrix in the first year of life - or else! The second year is for bonding with the Earth Matrix - or else again! Very compelling, but too much to explain here. Interestingly he says it is often traditionally the father's job to help the child bond with the earth in the second year of life. :)

Nature Deficit. . .

I will admit that the thing I worry most about as an urban unschooler is "Nature Deficit Disorder." Of course, if my kids went to the public school here, or any school in the city, they'd have the same problem! But then I could blame it on somebody else, to some degree. Aaah, isn't that just the luxury of having kids in school? But I digress.

One thing that makes me really sad is that my kids have no attachment to any natural place, really. When I was little I assumed that where I lived would always be mine, and would always be as natural as it was. Well. . . at least until my Rude Awakening at age 6, when we moved away from our 5.5-acre home to a new home on the lake. Not that I'm complaining about moving to the lake! But my older sister and I had a hard adjustment. Years later the land that was ours became a housing development, with 5 or 6 houses on the same lot that our house had stood on alone. Interestingly, someone fought to have our house moved (it had been the original house of Peter Gideon, "inventor" of the Wealthy Apple) and so it still stands down the hill from where it had been when I was living in it.

Now I take my kids out to my dad's house on the lake (the home we moved to when I was 6) but it has been quite sanitized over time. Rich neighbors have cut down trees and brush and re-landscaped it specifically to look like "Cotswald, England" (I'm not kidding!). And nowadays my dad always says, "When I'm gone, they'll plow this house over and build a mansion."

Soooo, my kids can't even "attach" to his land, either.

My husband and I have been talking for some time about moving to the woods or something. I used to feel incredibly desperate about this - like I and my kids are experiencing deprivation every single day. I feel a little better now that I am loving my loft apartment so much, and also after chatting with my stepsister, who just got back from three years in Switzerland. She said everyone in Zurich just heads for the mountains to hike every weekend. So I try to use the Swiss as my model in this way - and we try to get the kids out to spend the day at a very natural-seeming place (like a nature center) a couple of times a week, if possible. We also head down to the Mississippi or to one of the many Twin Cities lakes whenever we can. Luckily there is a lot of urban beauty in Minnesota.

But I am still manifesting a house in the woods! There's just nothing like being able to walk right out your own door and commune with nature for hours on end.

What's Up

Hmmm. . . I haven't posted about what we've been doing for a while. That is mostly because I've been obsessing over my latest career endeavors, which have to do with cartooning, blogging, and creating a website. Also: poster-making, card-making, t-shirt making, bumpersticker making, etc.

But anyway, we've found plenty o' time to go to nature centers, the library, social groups, playgrounds, and friends' houses. Also, Ezra does circus school once a week. My husband has been spending a lot more time with the kids this semester, too. But it's been so cold that they've mostly stayed inside together.

But one exciting new development is that Ezra has decided he wants his training wheels off! We had friends visit from Viroqua, Wisconsin, and Ezra found out that his friend (or Faux Cousin, as we like to call him), Luka, who is 9, does not have training wheels and apparently right away he said he was ready to try biking without them. So a day or two after Luka left, Kenny took the kids out to the back parking lot with Ezra's new training-wheel-less bike and Ottar's little scooter.

Ezra has also been learning more about rockets, of course, and currently he is working on another book. This one is called Rocky the Rocket's Adventures in Space.

Oh! How funny I almost forgot to mention Ezra has pretty much taught himself to read, with virtually NO help whatsoever and in fact I've been secretly discouraging it for over a year (I'm into Waldorf ideas about brain development). But anyway, now he loves to try to read rocket books, some of which are quite advanced. And also Captain Underpants, which we somehow ended up with a copy of (though I do really like it!)

Oh, and soon I will hopefully post pictures of the kids on their new rope ladder and rings we've hung in the middle of the apartment - hours and hours of cooperative, healthy, muscle-building fun!

Weekend in Milaca

Well, my husband and I have been thinking of moving to Milaca. Not because there is anything special or even probably tolerable about this small northern town, but just because it has a cool name and therefore we figured we could recruit lots of people to join us there because they would feel proud to say, "We needed to get way out of the city, so we're moving to ***Milaca!***"

So, when a friend of Kenny's said he was having an overnight skating and snowshoeing party there at his parent's place, we took it as a sign. We went to stay at Shelly and Eric's house - they have a really cozy, beautiful, woodsy house with a huge shop attached to the back, in 80 acres of woods with restored wetlands and 40 years of new growth trees (it had been clearcut before they moved there.)

We packed up the kids and got there way too late, in my opinion, but in any case we got to take the kids out on the pond in the woods behind the house, and look at the moon in the dark while other people skated. Later, at around 10:30 p.m., everyone went for a snowshoe-hike in the dark with both kids pulled by my husband in the sled, while I and many others snowshoed out to look at the constellations. That night I went to bed with the kids while Kenny did some sauna-ing and snowjumping, and the next day we snowshoed out to a further pond where some people had built a 7-foot snowman the day before. The kids loved it! Ezra even snowshoed with adult snowshoes on without complaining. Ottar insisted on walking and dragging his sled instead of riding in it, as is typical of him!

Later the woman of the house offered to take us out to see the resident porcupines. So we snowshoed out again and saw the nest and then the porcupine waaaay up in a tree. She told us quite a bit about porcupines and also showed us some wolf tracks and some mouse tracks that ended in the mouse being eaten by an owl (which also left a track). While we were doing this, Ottar was with me and the others, but unfortunately Kenny was back with Ezra, feeding him lunch after he got a little "loopy" and tried to start snowball fights (he loves snowball fights!) with un-amused adults. Since they didn't know if they could catch up with us, they went back to see the snowman, and Ezra had a *very, very* tearful goodbye. He named him Charlie and took pictures of him with his digital camera (after we got home the next day, he somehow figured out how to superimpose Kenny's voice pretending to be Charlie, over the photo. It said, "Hi, I'm Charlie the Snowman. Ezra, I hope you don't forget me after I melt!").

Kenny and I chatted at length with Shelly and Eric about living in the woods, thoughts on schooling/homeschooling, bears, berries, and Tom Brown's and other tracking/nature observation workshops they have taken. Shelly has learned to "hear" the plants she gathers for her native plant nursery.

Right before we went home, we also got to see Shelly and Eric make 2 pairs of snowshoes with their son and a friend. They used to have a snowshoe-making business and estimate that they made between 12,000 and 30,000 pairs. (One of them says 12,000, and the other says 30,000. . . hmmm.) Anyway, they have stopped the business but they still make them on occasion and it was so cool to watch.

I am now interested in snowshoeing after using their snowshoes, which are made in the traditional Cree (?) way and are made for the snows of Minnesota. I had previously been snowshoeing with a rental pair of aluminum snowshoes, but I kept sinking in and I was totally annoyed! Now I find out that those aluminum ones are meant for harder-packed snow, rocky terrain, or icy slopes.

One of the most impressionable things was the conversation I had with Shelly about her efforts to protect the hardwoods and the soil up in the area, and how many of the hardwood trees are cut down specifically to produce computer paper. She also explained how all the logging has depleted the soil so that now the trees have extremely shallow roots (no topsoil) and they blow down easily in storms.

I must say that the drive up to Milaca is mighty ugly, so we are now not too excited to move up there, but on the other hand, it was a very inspirational and educational experience, and it was cool to hang out with people who raised their kids on 80 acres, which is my dream!

We are very grateful to Shelly and Eric for their generosity, conversation, hospitality, and patience with our kids.

I hope to post some pix soon!