It was a strange little camp, wasn’t it? I remember the outdoor bathrooms, or bath houses, with Boy-San on one, and Girl-San on the other. I asked my stepfather about the place and he said it was a camp, but was pretty vague. Robin Wood! I love knowing its name, and that I didn’t dream it up because you were there, too.

Love you, Miss Paris-to-Edinburgh Gal! Hope you and Stan are having a great time!

I visited the little bridge and the grounds with the pool several times. We were told it’s name was Robin Wood. I remember a friend and I worked one day with the owner. In exchange for helping with yard chores, he let us swim in the pool.

It was a time in a rural area where I was free to explore, discover and find answers.

In more rural areas, those kids are still making their own landscapes. I love the boy who peers at things in your friend’s yard, and follows dogs (I used to follow cats–they ditched me easily). Best of all, that child is satisfying his own curiosity by looking and peering and wandering, not flicking on Google to find an instant answer. Kids are very good at finding answers these days. They aren’t so adept in searching for questions.

Caroline, how nice of you to drop by! The Jay Griffiths book is wonderful, so beautifully written in passages I have to put it down and close my eyes. No vacation for us, but am looking forward to a few days in Shenandoah County (well north of Roanoke in the Valley) to my mother’s family home. It’s all cornfields and cattle and the most gorgeous scenery ever. I won’t run through the fields like a little kid, but I’ll want to.

Yep, we were targets for mosquitoes, chiggers, rusty nails, thorns, poison ivy, and other hazards of running free outside, risks that made us realize, in our childlike way, that we didn’t own or control the planet.

The nature-deficient books are written by people like us, who had that glorious freedom and one-ness with place. Experts–and us non-experts–believe that freedom gives kids grit, something they will never achieve shut up in their rooms with computers, and, most important, empathy. If we don’t understand or care how the world works, right down to the smallest creatures and most common plants, we will lose it. We’re well on our way right now.