Messages on the path

We went to a wetland yesterday. The kids walked slowly at first, resisting the forced Monday morning activity. Can't we just stay home with electronic devices and our comic books?? But there we were, walking down the path. One part of the trail, the major draw, is a set of boardwalks that allow you to walk over marshes and shallow ponds created and maintained by the resident beavers. Leading up to and away from the boardwalks the preserve also has a looping trail that starts from and ends with a nature center.

The trail itself, the part that is not the boardwalk, is dirt loosely covered with fine gravel. The kind of gravel that kids like to drag their feet along to hear that scrape-y sound. They love to scrape, scraaape, scraaaaaaape until walking beside them you have no choice but to point out that it is quite difficult for the multiple bird watchers drawn to a wetland to hear what they came to hear over that very persistent gravelscrape — not that you are trying to curtail their liberty/delight, but is there any chance they are scraping just to see when you might ask them to stop? What I’m asking is: what proportion of the scraping is pleasure/curiosity and what proportion is forced-walking resistance?

Scraping along, we arrive at a fallen tree that has been aging in place since the first time the kids climbed on it when they were two and four. And here they are, almost 10 and 12. They notice their size now relative to this downed tree. They stand on the tree in the usual pose and ask for the usual photo, to compare to the first one and all the ones since then. Photo captured, scraping forgotten for the time being, they notice nearby that someone has scratched something into the gravel on the path, some words. The gravel is just a thin coating over the dirt path, so by scratching lightly with a stick one can clear away the top substrate to show the soil underneath. The writing is more of a temporary gravel clearing to create a darker soil image that will in little time be covered again by footfall.

The stickwriting we have come upon is of an early-elementary calibre, the spelling and letter formation somewhat rough and the message requires significant interpretation. The kids reminisce of a time when they too had written messages on this path just as we are approaching the boardwalks. There we observe mallards, frogs singing loudly but not yet any frogspawn, pintail ducks, a large bald eagle we stop to watch, logs covered in turtles, what looks like a lot of dead grass and I wonder where it will go when the new grass comes. Does it go underwater and that becomes peat? Do the ducks eat the old brown grass?

And then the boardwalks are behind us. The kids have slowed their pace, no longer in a hurry to leave. They are looking around, seeing holes in trees. Sam picks up a stick and squats down in the center of the path. I hope you are having a good day, he writes, leaving it there for whoever comes next. Maggie joins in: Rest here she writes with an arrow pointing to a nearby bench. Crumpets, Sam writes, for his own reasons. They continue in this way down the path, stopping frequently. Wishing goodness and care for the people they don't know walking behind. My heart fills, and not just with relief that what I first mistook for “poop” or “boob” was actually “good” (seeing the two ‘oo’s I had jumped to a premature, but not unprecedented, conclusion).

I'm a little bit uneasy though. I don't know what other people think about kids carving messages into the path. Might they disapprove? Might there be something about it that is a no-no in a nature preserve? It's the footpath, where people walk, the gravel shifts around all the time, it's temporary, it will fade quickly, it isn’t damaging the habitats on either side of the path. But when people pass, I feel a shadow of what their judgment may or may not be. I’ve made my own assessment of harm and found more good than not and certainly a significant amount of delight, so I'm letting this happen. Several people pass us while one or the other child is immersed in message-writing. One man walks past with someone who may be his mother and says "mystery solved." I smile. I think he means it in a friendly way, but I'm listening underneath for a reproach. His mother is not smiling, but she doesn’t come across as the frequently smiley type. We continue what we're doing. A few more people walk past.

With all of this writing we’re taking the trail much more slowly than usual. Walking and pausing. Sam finds another large dead tree that must be crossed from one uneven end to the other. Tree traversed, we continue on our way. Walking and watching the ground, I note a small round face drawn in the path, smiling. One that neither of my children has made. I point it out to Maggie and think to myself: someone else was here before us, earlier today, and they were drawing too.

One minute later I notice another face with funny teeth. And then a cartoon frog. It's here, at the frog, that I pause. I think these are for you, I say to Maggie and Sam. I think someone ahead of us, someone who has passed us, is stopping to draw these for you. My mind immediately goes to the man with the frowning mother. I'll never know of course.

Next we pass a lovely cartoon bird, a rabbit, and then there's a heart. I don't know if I have words, or need them, to explain how those little pictures made me feel. What those temporary and fragile messages scratched into the ground made me feel about people, what we are. How we can be. How we could be.

I hope you are having a good day.

You can rest here ---->

Crumpets.