Nurtured by Nature: Remembering a Back-to-the-Land Childhood
(Page 3 of 5)
December 2008/January 2009
By Liz Stuart
Tighe and I spent most of our childhood outdoors, partly because we had so much land to explore and partly because our family did not own a television. While other kids our age were parked in front of the TV, we were racing around the hills, getting all kinds of dirty. Living sans television resulted in our being widely regarded as weirdos while in elementary and middle school, but I would not trade that experience for anything. (Although there were a few years when I really did want a TV, not because I liked television, but because it would stop the other kids from thinking I was a freak.)
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With no TV to distract us, winter nights usually saw the family sitting around the woodstove with one parent reading aloud to the rest of us. This continued until Tighe and I were in high school and had homework and cross-country practice to fill our evenings. I still miss that tradition. We all read on our own as well. Literature filled our lives with imagination and adventure, instead of advertisement jingles and an addiction to pop culture.
Homegrown Creativity
From an early age, Tighe and I had a propensity for making forts and naming every landmark. We had Eagle Perch (a series of huts north of the house, made of boughs left from tree pruning), Fort Orchard (well stocked with boxes of fir cones in case of enemy invasion) and countless others. The geography of my childhood was defined by a network of trees, forts, rock formations, deer trails and dirt roads. For my brother and me, the distinction between indoors and out was blurred, and our sense of place and home was not attached specifically to a house, but to the land where we grew up.
One major advantage of growing up with acres of country at our disposal was the ability to stage creative parties and get-togethers. People would always spend time outside when we had gatherings at our house — no matter the season. Winter offered sledding and snowball fights. We once had an epic three-hour game of team tag in 2 feet of snow under a full moon. In the summer, parties meant flashlight tag, bonfires, boffer battles (involving padded swords made with plastic pipe and duct tape) and sleeping under the stars.
Much of the furniture, dishes and decorations in the house and outbuildings were made by hand. The tables in the house were both handmade, and the headboard of my childhood bed was constructed by my mother out of narrow, peeled logs — the trails of wood-boring beetles serving as decorative accents. In the kitchen, the pots and pans hung from a three-pronged branch that my father peeled, varnished and pegged to the wall above the stove. In general, if it could be made instead of bought new, it was. In many cases, secondhand building supply stores provided drawers or cabinetry that were repainted or varnished, and sometimes provided with new drawer handles made of bent branches. Tighe and I undertook our own construction projects throughout the years. During high school, I built a new door for the garden shed, and both Tighe and I helped build the new greenhouse a few years later.
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