by Maggie Downs posted in Parenting

I posted some images to Facebook the other day. These were photos of a day spent at a nature preserve with my 2.5-year-old son, hiking, looking at tadpoles, searching for frogs among the long grass at the edge of a pond, and letting ladybugs land on our fingers.

A longtime friend commented, ?You have the best outdoor adventures.?
The comment surprised me, because while I am a person who appreciates the outdoors at a distance ? like watching Planet Earth on Netflix ? I?d never classify myself as someone who has outdoor adventures.
I hike and I bike (less often than I should), but that?s about the extent of it. I?m not one of those people who skis or spelunks. I go to REI and I don?t even know what half the gear is supposed to do.
I remember telling someone years ago that golf courses were my favorite kind of outdoors because ?all the nature is where it?s supposed to be.? By that I meant that golf courses aren?t messy. The grass is mowed, and weeds exist in a specific spot. Ponds are blue and rarely swampy. Usually there are some pretty flowers and trees.
Moving to the desert, where nature comes to me rather than the other way around, has certainly muddied some of my boundaries. Finding a scorpion in the sink while brushing your teeth will do that. At night bats fly loops around the palm trees on my street, and occasionally I see coyotes drinking water from the neighborhood pool.
But the biggest change in me has come from having a chil...