Teaching the Wisdom of the Wild

By Contributing Writer, 7-26-05

by Natalie Taylor

I’m recently a single mom. Again. But the absence of a decent guy is not going to stop me from teaching my young girls (Lilli, two and Haley, thirteen; now that’s family planning) about the wonders of the wild. So I wrangled my kids away from MTV and the sand box and into the same room for five minutes to ramp up for a camping trip to southern Utah.

First, the Fears: Rattlesnakes topped the list. Then lions and tigers and bears, oh my. I had to explain to The Teen that humans had pretty much eradicated any likelihood of seeing wild animals in the wild. Then there was the separation anxiety from missing episodes of Date My Mom and Next or the potential horror of having to actually take turns with music selection on the CD player. Days of alternating Citizen Cope, Ludacris, and the alphabet sang to a reggae beat over and over again -- a slow torture they call compromise.

Sure, it was a little different from my backpacking trips in the past—trips that involved no agenda, only the gear I could carry on my back, and vast distances away from campgrounds and, God forbid, other campers. To me, car camping was to back country camping what Cheez Whiz is to Danish Havarti with a few caraway seeds thrown in for good measure.

But, given that I was solely responsible for both my daughters’ safety and entertainment, I opted for creature comforts and convenience. I bought a first aid kit and a snake bite kit and then went back to the store to buy a bigger, better first aid kit with laminated step-by-step instructions on how to wrap a sprained ankle or sooth a bad burn while hyperventilating with panic. We practiced hanging our arms below the picnic table to keep poisoned blood from reaching our hearts. I reserved camp sites in advance according to proximity to the restrooms indicated on the online maps. I even borrowed a queen size air mattress and charged the air pump. We stayed at campgrounds with hot showers, fire pits, and evening slideshows in the natural amphitheater. And we opted for smaller parks where we could take our dog, Ginger, on the trails with us. One of our “hikes� was a paved nature trail through cactus and red rock hoodoos that, maybe, pushed a quarter mile, round trip. Even then I ended up carrying Lilli on my scorched shoulders.

I caught the camping stove on fire. Twice. The backpacking stove I brought for back up failed to start rendering me coffee-less. I stopped for directions. Several times. The car battery died and we had to get it jumped from the camp host’s husband. There were multiple tantrums, mercurial, hormone-induced mood swings, and I put myself into time out before I abandoned them, both, for a chilled Chardonnay and cucumber mask. I recall the unfortunate planning of chili for dinner, consumed by all, just before retiring for a long, odorous night in an enclosed tent.

Although I longed for sweaty excursions in the desert heat, my girls were happy. They felt safe to explore, if only minimally. We slept well. And, we did see wild animals: chukars (OK, so we bought their seed at the ranger station), a couple of lizards, hawks, and the obligatory chipmunks. My toddler gathered pinecones and squirreled them away in her pockets, my teenager built fires in the pits and posed like Kelly Clarkson with microphones made of charred s’mores.

Still, my fears of the unknown were founded, sort of. We did see a snake. And there was much screaming. After Haley (who is taller than me) launched (someone explain the physics of this) straight up two feet and backwards four into my lap, she let out this guttural sound, or rather, a series of sounds, like a coyote who has been on the prowl for so long that when she finally found a rabbit she let out a surprised growl that scared herself with the sound of it and attempted to recover with some semblance of a aggressive howl. I stumbled backwards, screaming as well, because, well, my daughter was screaming and it scared me. I landed on the edge of the baby backpack, which saved Lilli’s legs and jolted her to an irritable, wakeful state. She had, evidently, been dreaming of air conditioned beds and cold apple juice. Ginger, who could not heel if her life depended on it, reacted like a reverse domino. Far ahead of our little troupe, she was caught in the act of not protecting us and yelped with shame then growled, hackles up, to make up for it. We all panted as the sun seared the scare into our bones. A faint rustling in the sage brought us back to reality and I caught the glimpse of a scaled tail, sans rattles, as it slithered away. Back at camp we pored over the little handbook guide to Kodachrome Basin to identify the tail end of a gopher snake.

Then there were the flies. Rather, winged insects in general: mosquitoes, gnats, and some god-forsaken creature called no-see-ums. These apparently are all terrifying creatures if they make skin contact with The Toddler. If one so much as fluttered by Lilli she would let out this piercing shriek that sounded like a cross between Mariah Carey’s highest note and Jamie Lee Curtis in top form. It reverberated through the earth and threatened to topple the ancient sandstone spires. I would sit down, explain to her that she is approximately fifteen billion times bigger than it and brush the offending thing off. She would look at me, amazed by my courage, and mimic me with a chubby swipe. A millisecond later, she’d scream again, her entire body (except for lungs) paralyzed, pointing with fearful focus at a gnat on her knee. The all-natural bug repellant had the opposite effect. Evidently, all bugs in southern Utah were very taken with the new flavor of this wholesome and delightsome juice, so much so that they told their friends. This went on for four days. In retrospect, it was horrifying.

An avid hot spring fanatic, I Googled natural hot springs and found one not entirely out of our way home. This was my treat to myself. And, after clearly explaining the plan ahead of time, after idling in the driveway, ready to go and asking my teen if she brought her swimming suit and her clearly nodding yes as she continued to read Clive Barker’s latest, we followed the print out directions to a hot pot that was literally, in the middle of nowhere (although it did have a parking lot and gate). Proud of my ability to follow directions and swampy in all skin folds, I gleefully stripped down to change into my swimming suit. A display of nudity that traumatized Haley although it was not because she saw, in broad daylight, my badges of motherhood: cellulite, stretch marks, and breasts that sag like Marty Feldman’s eyes. She huddled in the front seat, mortified, before finally confessing that she has, gasp, zits on her back. Someone might see them. And, she forgot her suit. She had nothing to wear.
Given the remote nature of the pool, I suggested that underwear might be a suitable substitute. Clearly, I was out of my ever-loving mind. I pointed out the dirt road and explained that anyone coming would give us a few miles of advance warning simply by the wake of dust billowing behind like a tornado. I pointed out the thick layer of red sand on our car for emphasis. We could easily get out of the pools, get dressed, and back to the car before they even came within visual range. This was too much of a gamble.

I had a quandary. The hot springs and parking lot were a few hundred feet apart, so if I went to the hot springs, Haley would be out of sight. But getting so close to hot springs I could smell the sulfur and not getting that rotten egg stench into my pores was asking too much. I rationed she could stay in the car with the dog and I’d take Lilli for a quick soak. Fifteen minutes, tops. Intuitively, I knew that we were safe. But my fears got the better of me.
The pool itself had a shallow shelf but the center dipped 40 feet or more down and out like a bell. The depth frightened Lilli and she clung to me like a Velcro monkey. As I was soaking, I envisioned strange men, immune to heat, leering from the bushes where they lived, waiting for just such a chance to kidnap my nubile teen. I imagined the dog writhing with heat stroke and me being hauled away by PETA for animal cruelty. And, I saw Lilli slipping, wet and stubborn, arching her back in an epic tantrum, out of my hands and spiraling slowly, reaching out to me as she drowned in the deep center of the hot water. It was the first time that trip I wished that one of their fathers had been there to help. Eight minutes later I ran to the car, exhausted by my hyper-vigilance. Haley sat lip-synching at full throttle, air conditioning blaring, battery juice leaking on the sand. If the battery had died out there, who knows how long it would have been before someone with jumper cables drove by. There were words in loud tones and varying degrees of bitter regret.

We high-tailed it to the highway in silence. It wasn’t until I bought some jerky from this hippie chick with Willie Nelson pigtails plopped at the side of the road just because Lilli pointed to the dozen colorful flags flying from the top of her trailer that Haley spoke to me, “Jeez Mom, get over it.�

The minute the sandy tires hit the gravel in our driveway, I cried with relief. Not because I could finally have a cup of coffee and smother myself in Caladryl lotion, but because we were safe. When I decided to take the girls camping, I put my own fears into a drawer and locked them away. But they were there, waiting like an old friend for the time when I felt safe enough to feel them. After the last green metal mug had been thoroughly sanitized in hot, soapy water, I felt strong, empowered, bold. I felt that even though our family was broken, I was still a good role model, and maybe, through nature, I could at least keep this part of my family together and close. No matter how my heart was hurting or how scared I felt, my girls never knew it.

In that post-success high, we planned camping trips that would consume every weekend for the rest of the summer — although I put my foot down on celebrating Christmas in a snow cave. My eldest daughter asked for copies and carefully put the pictures in a photo album. She even asked me to burn her copies of a few of my cds, you know, the ones that weren’t totally square. I sent the fears that marched like miniature boy scouts in my head packing.
I don’t know how much to share with my oldest daughter. I don’t want her to be afraid of nature -- respectful, aware, prepared, but not afraid. I think I could manage a snake bite if her life depended on it and the car battery was up and running. But there are a whole lot of things to be afraid of. I’m not going to let the lack of a man keep us from tapping into a power source and living with some sense of freedom, however fleeting. It was however, a poignant reminder of feminine vulnerability and how my greatest responsibility is teaching my daughters how to transmute the poison of fear into powerful, wild wisdom. [End of article]