Raising Georgia

When I was a kid, I was enamored with the tales of adventurers and the hard life of free men who explored this country in the wilderness of it’s youth.  The bravery of these men, blazing trails through the unexplored wonder that this beautiful country has to offer is something almost beyond comprehension for modern man.  Unequaled by anything until our landings on the moon hundreds of years later.   How bold and ambitious must they have been to plunge headlong into a dangerous and unforgiving wilderness in search of wealth, for some, but merely to see what was out there for many.   Like the seaman of old, the Vikings and countless explorers before them, that horizon called with a song that could not be ignored.  

I was one of them in my youth, or so I thought.   Mom and dad worked long hours and were gone most of the day and my youth was devoid of the electronic distractions of modern day.  Entertainment was something we invented, not something we purchased.  Every morning I would strap on my Jim Bowie knife, don my Daniel Boone hat, sling my .22 Remington rifle over my shoulder like Jim Bridger and plunged into the uncharted hinterland that was commonly known as the undeveloped area bordering Brown Bridge Road and the Yellow River.  Admittedly it was hardly unexplored by mankind, but in my mind it was the first foray into the Adirondacks, a trek into the foothills of the Sierra Nevada and an ever expanding alien world in which I was free to create whatever world in which I wanted to inhabit. 

I was Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer.  I swam the Mighty Mississippi (Yellow River) more times than I can remember and transformed back into Meriwether Lewis upon the far shore, expanding my conquests by the day, week, month and year.   I built forts to protect my lands from imaginary foes, attempted rafting in a misguided experience with limited knot tying skill, I dug foxholes and mineshafts and any number of small buildings and fortifications.  I devised ways of dragging fallen logs into place, notching them with my grandfather’s hatchet and a small part of me imagines they’re still there today, though in reality they’ve rotted away long ago.   Perhaps, however, they were somehow buried and in some future era they’ll stump some archeologist for at least a time.   

I was chased by a wild pig once, a dangerous experience to be sure, but one that further captured my imagination and drove me deeper and further into the vast unknown.  I imagined bear and elk and all manner of wildlife though the boar was the sole exception to squirrels, deer and the occasional skunk or possum.   Fueled by books and powered by pants pockets stuffed with scraps of whatever food was left out or over from dinner, I explored not only the limits of my immediate world but of my imagination and my abilities.   I became a birdwatcher, a guide stuffed into my pocket and a pair of WW2 binoculars better suited to surveying a battlefield than bluebirds.  I tried my hand at identifying local flora but a terrible run in with poison oak cut that inclination short in an itchy and painful way. 

Now, it seems the world has shrunk and those beloved days of my youth are no longer possible.  It is with lament that I, and from the memes I see on Facebook, many others think of the explorations of our youth.  In my youth I was Finn, or Bridger or Natty Bumpo.   Perhaps some children were here as well.   Perhaps they were Buzz Aldrin, Hank Aaron or even Earhart.  It really doesn’t matter, because the truth is that the world hasn’t shrunken at all.  It was us that outgrew it, not vice versa.  Not physically, but mentally and intellectually we might think.  

Kids however, seem to be a salve for that, if you’ll allow it.  They can pull you back into that world in which you’re allowed once more to embrace that explorative nature that defined my youth.  Now I’m not as much Boone or Bridger but I find myself daring to believe I could be a Hemingway or a Grizzard.  Hell, who knows what I could still be?  It reminds me daily as I watch her expand  a grow that our greatest wilderness lies within us.   It’s an unexplored land we learned to ignore at some point in our lives.   

It’s another reminder that we have as much to learn from our children as we have to teach them.  They’re a font of wisdom so authentic and genuine that to ignore it is truly perilous.  The live for the moment, doubt is an undeveloped skill and wonder and amazement are the hallmarks of their day.  Most importantly exploration is the cornerstone of their existence, both of the world they’re newly familiarizing themselves with and the world within themselves.  Their potential is truly unlimited in that it is unscarred and unabridged by society, bitter experience, doubt and fear.   They are the explorers of life and of what it means to be alive. 

And perhaps this one is raised in an urban environment far removed from the forest of my youth, devoid of the wildlife and perhaps it’s busier and more concrete jungle than Georgian  woodland.   However, fatherhood has taught me that the explorer in me wasn’t due to the fact that the forest was there, and I didn’t create the childhood I had out of the environment I lived in.  It blossomed from my imagination and the belief that somewhere out there was my Everest. my Pacific Ocean, my Atlantis.   I was raised in Georgia, but in more ways than I can count that Georgia that I created in my adventurous youth is now in me, and that’s something I can surely pass along.

Maybe it’s time I donned that coonskin hat once more and set out to find what’s out there.