Protection
This is a guest post written by my husband. If you want to, you can read my follow up (prolog) here.
When I learned that I was becoming a father, a million thoughts went through my mind. One of the thoughts stood out as somewhat primitive, yet fundamental: I wanted to protect this little being from the dangers of the world.
One evening, I went to our mound to make a vow: I vowed to teach my child about the magic of nature and the miracle of life. This would be my life long task. I asked whoever was listening for protection, and for my child to be healthy.
I was very happy with my little homemade oath. Not only did I feel as if I had given something back to whoever is really in charge, but I had also found a way to combine my personal hobbies with being a father. I knew it would make parenting and fatherhood easier. Last but not least, I was relieved that my child would grow up in tune with nature and all the magic within. My philosophy has always ben: a person with a true connection and natural love for our uninhabited surroundings will be much better equipped to handle whatever life throws at them.
When my son was three months old, every morning I strapped him to my back, and off we went. Not more than a year later, his little sister was born. Nothing makes me happier than to see this gift being unwrapped little by little as I watch my kids get down and dirty.
Five years later, I’m still convinced that this is the greatest gift I can give to my children. No ultra-high-definition TV screen, no trips to Disneyland, no Gucci baby bikinis, or thousand-kroner birthday cakes can ever come close to the gift of nature. It is the gift that keeps on giving, season after season. Being outside in nature boosts your creativity and imagination. It makes you independent. You will always have a place to go, whether you are happy, sad, angry, or just bored. If you are comfortable in nature, you will always have a second home. A safe space, that follows you around offering sanctuary whenever you are in need. At the same time, its humbling: when you open your eyes and see the grandeur of life, the big nature unfolding around, and realize your tiny place in it, how tiny you are, and what role you could or should not play.
Please let me stress that I am no hardcore explorer like Roald Amundsen or Fridtjof Nansen. Not even close. Some days, finding the motivation to go on even the smallest of adventures can be challenging. Sometimes I even fail miserably, handing over the responsibility of parenting to Peppa Pig and her friends. What I’m trying to say is that I am not always the dad I aspire to be, but I’m doing my best. At the end of the day, a terrifying thought motivates me to get back outdoors: the thought of my children having a limited life.
Because not having a connection to nature limits you.
Imagine not being comfortable in or around water; a big part of the planet would be inaccessible to you. That’s a heavy limit. What about being afraid of the dark? You’d be limited to functioning properly half of the time. Especially in Norway during the winter. Imagine being afraid of bugs, so you never lay down in the grass. Imagine dreading the feeling of “something” under your foot, so you never walk barefoot. Imagine your skin being so soft and meek, that your feet can’t handle walking on stones. Or being afraid of rain because you think the rain and cold itself is what makes you sick. That’s truly limiting. The list is endless. Imagine not being able to sleep on the ground, relying on soft beds, costume made pillows and fluffy blankets. Imagine not being able to poop in the moss, not knowing how to clean yourself without soap and running water.
What a splendid decision! In addition to tiny humans, we also decided to bring animals into our lives: horses, cats, sheep, chickens. Not only did it give our farm a tiny piece of its past grandeur back, but it also brought more life. Life as in happiness, fascination, and a sense of community, but also life as in tragedies, death, frustration, and veterinary bills that could make anyone cry tears of blood. But I simply love to see my children interact with the animals. The way they learn about respect, compassion, and empathy from helping me take care of them, or simply from interacting with them on their own terms. These are good, old, valuable lessons learned the way they always have been—with the animals as my co-pilots in the crazy game of parenting.
Some might think that when I share these thoughts, I’m trying to raise our children as strange hermits, only eating nuts and berries they’ve foraged themselves, hiding from the material world with no knowledge about how billions of people on Earth actually go about their lives from cradle to grave. Well, I’m not. I’m really not. I want my children to have the best of both worlds, not just one. I want them to have a true connection to nature as well as the skills to exploit all the benefits of high tech and to travel to every metropolis on the planet. I won’t be the one teaching them the tech-savvy stuff, but I don’t need to either. I know for a fact that even here, a short car ride from the Polar Circle, my kids will be bombarded with screens, smartphones, and all kinds of thinkable and unthinkable tech items from a very young age. And as all their little peers around the globe, they will master it almost instinctively.
What I’m worried about right now is something quite different. The truth is that our three beloved sheep are slowly but surely marching toward their fate as Yule dinner. I remember the look in my kids’ eyes when they saw three tiny lambs in diapers in our bathroom on a Monday morning in May. Is it hard to eat a friend?
I started off by writing about my deep need to offer my children protection. Instinctively, I want to shield them both from the sadness of losing a friend, and from experiencing death up close, or rather: the metamorphosis from friend to dinner. I ask myself: will concealing the reality of nature protect them, or will it only confuse them? I’m still thinking about it.
Christian Aune Falch
