Willits, CA - Free-Range Parenting in a Factory Farm World

If you ever happen to be in Willits, CA, go to the KOA.  There is a pool, hot tub, wifi, and playground.  And also goats, rabbits, and emus.  The rabbits, including one I have cleverly dubbed 'Ole One Ear,' run free-range across the campground, nibbling the grass and the occasional trash bag.  This campground ("Kampground") also features a giant play jungle, like something you would see at Chuck E. Cheese.  The management has posted signage that specifies that a parent must supervise the children while they play, but may not actually enter the play structure.  I'm at a point where rather than finding this needlessly bossy, I am thankful for the explicit instruction.

I'm currently reading Bringing Up Bebe by Pamela Druckerman - I found it at a used book store and bought it because I heard a good review on NPR a while back.  Plus I am always looking for a new parenting method - one that will be obviously superior to the other 23 parenting philosophies I have investigated so far, some unifying theory of parenting that can be applied in all situations.

My friend and mom-mentor Kate knows this is folly.  She recommends taking what works from each parenting philosophy; she calls this 'adding tools to the parenting tool box.'  Sometimes I feel like I am building a single-engine plane and I look in my toolbox and it's just jammed full of different types of tooth brushes.

So I picked up the book thinking mostly of Bear, but as usual with these sort of things it has just convinced me I'm doing Pax all wrong.  Did you know French babies eat only four times a day?  Pax eats four times an hour.

Anyway, the French would give Bear more space.  Heaven knows he must want it, given his penchant for running away.  So I try to give him little chores.  Here's two dollars, go over there and buy your own lollipop from the snack bar, walk to the playground that's 20 yards from our campsite, etc.  But the social norms tend more towards the helicopter parenting - people keep returning him to us.  "Have you lost a little boy?" And sometimes the more stern, "You need to stay with your child, he can't be alone in the store."  I have enough anxiety around letting him strike out on his own like this, I don't have the confidence to just tell people to stop interfering.  When the woman at the Goodwill told me I needed to stay with my child, I was mortified.

Me: Oh no, what did he do? Is he naked? Has he destroyed something? Did he threaten to kill someone?
Goodwill Employee: No, he was just counting the candles.  But he needs to be with an adult.
Me: (distracted by being impressed by his excellent behavior) So, wait, what's the problem?
GE: He needs to be with you. It's store policy.

In the book, Druckerman talks a lot about how anxious American parents are compared to French parents.  And I think this is why - it has to be us, the parents themselves (and often, the mother specifically, though this is another thought for another day). In France, the raising of children is seen as a communal project - and instead of me adopting a unique parenting philosophy and instilling it all on my own, I wish American society were just a bit more like the French.

I don't expect the Goodwill employee to change my kid's diaper or intervene in a tantrum.  Just tolerate him being there, and maybe remind him not to touch the glass candlesticks.

May 17 & 18 - Beaches, Redwoods, Human Mortality

From Jedediah Smith Redwood State Park, we proceeded to Humboldt Redwood State Park with a stop at the beach.

Bear loves the beach - he had a great time exploring and I had a great time watching him.  We had the place mostly to ourselves until a small group came up the path to the beach with a video camera and a small box.  I was curious about what they were doing and thought that they might be releasing some sort of rehabilitated wildlife.  They took the box to the edge of the water and opened it - dumping the ashes into the surf.

Sunrise, sunset and whatnot.

Benjamin performs the Double Child Extraction

Why yes, in every selfie I am wearing this hat.

Full of attitude.

The trees don't even look large in this photograph.  They were really, really large.

The tiny colorful things here are tents - full sized tents.

Two living trees on either side of a stump, Pax for scale.

Ferns!

May 16 - Dunes, Redwoods, and the Recipe for Happiness

Every place we go on this trip I think, "My parents would love this."  And though the thought of any more human flesh inside this RV makes me want to pull out my already thinning hair - I do wish they were here.  Honeyman State Park is no exception - they would love this place. It's all tall pine trees, blooming rhododendrons, soft moss, and prehistoric-looking ferns.  

The other treasure of the park is the dunes. This morning the four of us went on a walk to explore.  "Like a sandy moonscape," the guidebook said, and it's not wrong.  The horizontal distance of the walk was short, but there was some serious elevation change, all of it over shifting sand - quite the workout.  At the top of the great dune, a huge sand bowl spread out in front of us, crisscrossed with ATV tracks.  And beyond that, the ocean.

Back at the campsite we prepared the cabin for take takeoff (it's getting faster every time!) and got underway.  We stopped at Cape Arago State Park, where Pax and I explored a short path to an overlook where we could see - mostly a distant writhing brown mass that we were told was seals.  The visual was a bit of a strain, but the really cool part was hearing them, which we could actually do from the parking lot.  They made quite the racket!

They boys were napping in the RV, so Pax and I sat at a picnic table and played with our toes and wrote in our journals, respectively.  It was exactly that blissful beach feeling you hope for - the calm and the sound of the waves and the view of the ocean - without having to get in the pesky sand.

We stopped in Bandon, OR, which was underwhelming.  Bear purchased a plastic bucket and shovel that he is so wildly enthusiastic about that I wonder why we bothered taking him on this trip rather than leaving him at home in his cousin's sandbox.

After another beautiful vista stop, we were getting hungry for dinner, which is always evident by the level of screaming inside the RV reaching a crescendo.  After telling Bear for the 18th time that he needed to put on clothes to go inside the pizza place (he prefers to travel in underpants only), I had a stroke of genius and sent Benjamin inside to retrieve pizza and bring it back to the RV.  While we waited, I nursed Pax and plopped Bear in front of the iPad.  When Benjamin came back with the food, I was feeling significantly less homicidal.

As a result of our slow pace and many stops, it was getting late when we pulled into our campsite for the night.  It seemed even later than it was because the trees blocked out the light.  And by trees I mean giant redwoods.  Holy.  Cow.

Pictures can never do these trees justice.  The forest is verdant and soft - the light softened by filtering through the dense canopy, the ground carpeted with needles, and any remaining hard edges are padded with thick green moss.    In the guidebook I learned that this park (Jebediah Smith Redwood State Park) is where the Endor scenes from Star Wars were filmed - and it does indeed look like we could stumble upon an Ewok settlement at any time.  It would not be the least bit out of place.

 I have been struggling with my mood a fair amount on this trip.  Over the past couple of years my depression in general has been much more manageable (thanks, Prozac!).  But this trip the irritability has been often getting the best of me.  Though the triggers are equal parts my husband and my three year old, I spend more time than I would like just awash in a general sense of rage at everything. I mostly take this out on Benjamin, which I'm pretty sure is exactly what all those self-help relationship books tell you to do.  I often feel the overwhelming crankiness coming over me and feel like there is nothing I can do to stop it and it just feels awful.

I woke up in this kind of mood here at Jebediah Smith Redwood State Park despite being, you know, in the middle of a gorgeous redwood forest on an extended vacation with the people I love most in the world.

So I fought back. I got up, took my Prozac, made coffee, and went for a run.

I estimate the run was 2-3 miles, but I have no idea, I did not bring my phone or map a route.  I saw many beautiful things, but I didn't take any pictures because again, no phone.  But I saw the things with my own eyes and I smelled the thick forest smell and I felt my feet thump over the carpet of pine needles.  I ran first through the campground, watching everyone get up and start their stoves and their camp fires and come out of their tents stretching.  I watched a pair of sisters shuffle to the bathhouse in their pajamas, clutching their toothbrushes and already starting to giggle at each other.  I saw camping families with plastic tablecloths on their picnic tables making pancakes on their coleman stoves.  And then I turned onto a little nature trail that was completely deserted and for a few minutes I was alone in the forest with just my breath.  The path curved around back through the campground and along a ridge that ran above our campsite - I looked down at our camper to see if their were signs of life, to see if I should be heading back.  But all was quiet and I was struck by how this tiny little vehicle held our little family and how small we are in this big world, under these big trees.

It is not a mystery, what makes me happy.  It is coffee, prozac, endorphins, reading, and family.  This is not the most complicated recipe.  This is something I think I can manage to cook from scratch.

May 15 - Pax is 5 Months Old and We Reach the Pacific

Pax is five months old today.  I will spare you the full extent of my maudlin feelings on the subject, but it is true what they say, "long days, short years," etc.  There's some extra angst around her grandparents missing her babyhood and this possibly being my last baby and on and on.  Anyway, Pax celebrated by vomiting rather spectacularly all over our bed during her assigned "tummy time."  I broke out my backup fitted sheet and Bear promptly crawled into bed totally caked in sand.

Today was also notable for being the end of the westward portion of our journey.  We reached the Pacific coast and now turn South.  We first saw the ocean from Road's End state park just outside Lincoln City.  Bear ran around like a barefoot maniac, scooping up and and throwing it again, running with his arms out pretending to be an airplane, squealing when his toes touched the cold stream water that ran down to beach to join the ocean.  A child in nature - pure joy.

We continued down the coast to Newport, where the kids and I visited the Oregon Coast Aquarium (Benjamin napped in the RV.)  Aquarium highlight: the tidal touch pool, where Bear and I were brave enough to touch some colorful anemones (sticky) and sea urchins (spiny).

I'm finally getting better at the maneuver I call The Solo Extraction (TSE). TSE means getting Bear to leave a place - any place - with Pax and without the help of another adult.  I'm told that I had difficulty with transitions as a child as well.  My uncle Mark enjoys telling a story about how I had to be removed from my grandmother's house "in a football hold, kicking and screaming."  Well folks, lets just say that allllll those chickens have come home to roost in Bear.  His standard response to "it's time to go." has evolved from merely "no," to "you can't catch me."  So when I say I'm getting better at TSE, I just mean I did not have to chase him through the entire aquarium, though there was still screaming and biting.

The kids napped in the RV.  We pulled over at a particularly gorgeous overlook with a view of the rocky beach far below.  Besides the usual seagulls, there were some black and white birds hopping along the rocks and occasionally diving into the water to catch a fish.

Then we spotted a pair of sea lions swimming through the water like graceful mammalian torpedoes. They would disappear under the waves and then surface together, perfectly synchronized.  It became a fun game to try to predict where they would come up.  I watched them until they disappeared around the edge of the rocky outcropping.

A little later down the road there were official sea lion caves where you could pay $14 to take an elevator inside the rock to see them more closely.  We didn't go - the kids were sleeping and we'd already spent money on the aquarium, but mostly I was happy with my private experience of this one pair of sea lions far below us, moving through the water together and not caring about us.

Our campsite for the night was at Honeyman State Park where we were at the right time to catch the Rhododendron bloom.  After partaking of the campground playground, ate a dinner of leftovers, had a small fire, and went to sleep.