Growing Up in Wyoming

I read an article about a book in the newspaper. Author Richard Louv wrote “Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder.” The article quoted the author “Physically, nature is not as available. The bulldozers took out the woods.” Apparently his solution to saving children is to send them to summer camp.

The article stated that the author felt exposing kids to nature can, among other things, reduce childhood obesity and attention deficit disorder, and nurture creativity and confidence instead of spending summer in air-conditioned houses watching TV, playing video games, or just going outside to play organized sports. Because American kids have lost their connection to the natural world there is an epidemic of obesity, learning disabilities and depression that could be remedied if kids just got outside more.

I read all of that and was just downright amazed. Our state is our children's heritage, their playground, and their teacher. Yes, the boys play video games, watch television and grew up with air-conditioning. But our kids also explore their environment, much as I did, and my parents before me. Their friends are outside a lot, too. There are still youth in our town who are obese and who have learning disabilities and who are depressed. Being outside a lot doesn't seem to be the answer to all problems.

We did family vacations around our great state with our boys, as I did, and my parents did growing up, to learn as much about our great state as possible. As parents, my husband and I were very thankful for technology and air conditioning. My family had to spend inside time to do that-time locked inside a car with each other driving to our destinations. We happily let our kids listen to first cassette tapes when they were small, then compact discs, and now MP3's. We bought them hand held video players and games to while away the hours spent in the car in Wyoming-and traveling out of Wyoming. Yes, they read, we talked and we play car games, but those get old after six hours in a car to see Fossil Butte, to go climb at VeedaWoo, to see South Pass City, to see the Medicine Wheel and to Devil's Overlook.

We have white water rafted outside of Cody, Thermopolis and Jackson and out of state. Our youngest son loves white water rafting and I really wish he would be a ski instructor in the winter and a rafting guide in the summer for at least a couple of years of his life, but he wants to be a Doctor. His dream is to be a family practitioner in Thermopolis, Wyoming.

We swim in the Worlds Largest Mineral Hot Springs in Thermopolis. We race across the swinging bridge and walk the terraces. We participated in the River Regalia once, floating the Shoshone River from the Wedding of the Waters headwater to the Hot Springs State park in our ragtag collection of tubes and rafts. It was hot that day and although we also floated a cooler with water-and high calorie, bad for you, obesity causing soda- we still were dehydrated by the end and ready to be done. We wore sunscreen and hats, but we still got sunburned. Melanoma is a huge concern these days, unlike in my foolish teenage days when I laid out coated with baby oil to get a tan whenever I wasn't at work in the air-conditioned grocery store. My Mom didn't have sunscreen as a preteen or teenager, but she worked outside in the summers, weeding gardens, washing clothes on a washboard, taking care of chickens in the 1930's. I don't have skin cancer-yet. Mom doesn't either. My Dad did, though. I guess cancer is just one more thing to worry about, along with obesity, learning disabilities and depression.

My kids both have central auditory processing disorder, but is that really a learning disability? It certainly wasn't caused-or cured- by them spending more time outside. They both do well in school. They have jobs. They both started contributing to social security when they were fourteen, the same as I did, the same as my siblings did, the same as my parents did. We believe in an honest days work for an honest days pay. If you want to attend the University of Wyoming and get at least a bachelor degree-as I did, and my four siblings, and my parents, you had better get good grades, get scholarships and have money in the bank.

Our kids can ride horses, but they don't ride. If you're from Wyoming, you probably know the difference. The oldest has ridden fence, and repaired fence, and doesn't want to ever work with barbed wire again. Now seventeen, he works at Pizza Hut as a server, making good tips. Both boys have also assisted building a wooden privacy fence, too. One of the cool things about doing sweaty outside manual labor is that it teaches you what you don't want to do for the rest of your life. The youngest son, aged fourteen, works at the Radio Station-inside, in the air conditioning, primarily in the evening. Both boys want a college education so they can work inside the rest of their born days and make a decent living doing so.