Seeing with a Child's Eyes

 This  Thanksgiving holiday has connected me to my family. And when our family gets together we talk about our childhoods: how my dad would fall off his chair if we ate our beans, how we used to compete about how many ears of sweet corn we could eat in one meal. We shared memories of our school bus driver, of our classmates. Being with family seems to root me, to give me long deep roots. It reminds me that I belong somewhere. 

This time the family experience reminded me of how I used to play outdoors. As I grew old enough to be on my own, rather than under a mother's careful watch, I could go anywhere I wanted on our big farm. My cousin John was just a year older than me, and he often led the way. We climbed up to the top of the silo and looked out across acres and acres of crop land. We built a tree house on the bank of the Wapsinonoc Creek and hung a bag swing off the tree so that we could swing over the creek. We went out to the middle of a corn field and ate soft small immature ears of corn whole and raw. We rode on the wagon when our fathers were baling hay, and played in the huge piles of oats in the  grain barn. We sought out the nests of newborn kittens in the upper story of the cow barn, and went fishing in the "new channel" below our house. So many fun memories!

As I was thinking about those childhood days today, I remember seeing the world differently then. The eyes of my child self did not look critically or intellectually at the natural world when I left the house and explored the pastures and fields, the creek banks and waterways. Instead somehow it was all of one piece, the outdoors, the world. There was the feel of this vast panorama of earth surrounding me, adventures everywhere. And it was an enormous whole, not separate parts. I doubt that I paid a lot of attention to specific things. I did not evaluate or compare. I just blissfully traveled through the landscape, the sun on my head, the breeze blowing softly through my hair, the long grass at my feet. And I felt part of everything. 

I wish I had those same child's eyes today. When it snows now, I do joyfully watch the first snow as the white flakes drift slowly down. But I am also thinking about how slick it might be outside, and if we will need to shovel the walks. Will I need to cancel my appointments?  When a tornado struck our farm when I was around 10, my child mind sensed it as adventure. As my family gathered in our basement while the howling wind played havoc with trees and buildings outside, I was awestruck but not scared. The power of the storm seemed a wondrous thing. But of course my parents were worrying about the destruction, and our safety. Adults have so much more responsibility than a child, and their outlook on the world is affected by that. I suppose we can't really look at the world with child's eyes once we grow up.

What I'd like to recapture, though, is that sense that everything is connected, that the living world is a whole, that though we can look at different things separately, the wide context is this round planet of life, all connected, one thing flowing into another. That is the kind of outlook that most adults have lost these days, partly because so much of our landscape is manufactured. Especially for folks who live in cities (which is most of us) we're surrounded by buildings and streets.  We can't see the whole fabric of the planet.

As a city dweller, I try to remind myself that I need to get out in the prairie, in the woods, in a setting where there aren't buildings, where there is sky and trees and ground cover. I did that today, but it would have been easy not to go. I thought of the things I could get done if I just stayed home. But that little nudge to nature won out, fortunately. And I ended up walking high up on a hill at Kent Park, a wonderful place near Iowa City, with a lake, a prairie, acres of woods, and inspiring vistas from the high points. There were no other people there, no cars, and I was in an area with no buildings or anything else that people had made except the curving road. On one side of my path was tall prairie grass blowing in the wind. On the other side was an evergreen woods. As soon as I reached the woods, the sound changed. It was dramatic, wind blowing through pine needles. And overhead the clouds were racing across the sky. At the far horizon I could see areas where gray lines of rain were falling. A hawk flew over, and then a V of geese. Yes, I thought. This is what I need to stay rooted, to stay connected. I tried to look with the eyes of a child. And though I have grown into an adult, those child eyes were still able to peer out at the landscape and be enthralled.