Parenting has suddenly become exponentially more challenging. Overnight, we have had to become everything for our kids–social and emotional support, teachers, friends, extended family, the friendly barista at the coffee shop, etc–all while dealing with the emotional fallout (for the kiddos and for ourselves). Phew. Let’s take a minute to acknowledge: this is hard.

Way back when, like, a month ago, nature was a huge part of my parenting. In a world that bombards us with screens, superheros, and shopping, I have always struggled to push the focus back onto the outdoors. Ideally, I do this by actually being outdoors: one of the beautiful things about little kids is that a 300 foot trail, or a pullout by the bay, can offer an hour of adventure and exploration.

But now most parks and open spaces are closed. We still get out in the yard, but sometimes even that isn’t possible – like when mama has work from home. One resource that I discovered keeps my little one entertained (and my outdoorsy heart happy) has been nature-based coloring pages; I send her to wait by the printer, and she’s delighted when a new one pops out. If I space them out properly, the print-and-color cycle might keep her happy for 45 minutes, or more. This time is like gold, people.

Here are some links to a few different pages that I liked; I’m sure you can find a lot more on your own. And if you have no kids, you might enjoy them anyway, to de-stress and take your mind on a little nature vacation.

• 20 pages of National Parks, here from education.com. You have to create an account, but it’s fast and free (scroll to the bottom of the page to download all at once).
• Pollinators of Alaska coloring book, here, from Glacier Bay National Park.
• California rare animals coloring book, here, from California State Parks.
• A variety of National Park scenes, here, from USA Printables (the interface is a little clunky, but the selection is good)
• John Muir Laws’ website is an absolute wealth of free drawing instructions – adults and older kids might want to check out the “how to draw birds,” “how to draw mammals,” and “how to draw plants” pages; (be sure to check out the sidebars on the right for tons of related videos, tutorials, and other links!). There are a lot of resources for teachers too–which we all are at the moment. However, for my little one I just selected some of the non-colored images and printed those for her to color in (for example, this one from the “how to draw a bewicks wren” tutorial, or this one from the “simplifying bird plumage” tutorial).
• Wildflowers of the Colorado Mountain tops, here, by the US Forest Service, is nice because it includes some extra sciency detail if you want it.

What kind of nature art are you all doing while in quarantine? I’d love to hear about it!

A squishy and inviting stretch of mudflat lay where there is usually water lapping at sand. It turned out that kiddo, dogs, and I had arrived at the beach at an extra low tide–what a treat! An hour later, the white dogs were brown. I was muddy to my shins, and Em was muddy to her knees. After a cursory wipe (and gratitude for my trusty home-made seat cover) the fun was over, and we piled ourselves back in the car to head home.

There was a time when I thought that playing in the mud with my daughter would be the most natural thing in the world–and, yesterday, it was. But I have had to work on my relationship with mess a lot more than I expected.

I always knew I wanted to be a mother, but I didn’t think a lot about what that would look like. In fact, the only daydream I can remember, from before my daughter was born, was really just a single image–an idea like an old photograph, looked at so many times it burns into my memory. I envisioned a little blond girl, wearing a grubby white shirt, sitting on the ground and grinning. She had been playing in the dirt, so her face and hands and chubby little legs were all dirty. Yes, my goal was to raise a little mud baby. “Dirty kids are happy kids,” was what I figured, based on my own childhood running around in the woods.

Then, parenthood actually arrived. And so did the endless cleaning. Faces, hands, dishes, tables, floors, clothes. Every palm joyously smacking into spaghetti sauce, or paint, or mud, or pancake batter, made me cringe: I immediately saw more cleaning. All those little splatters. Mine, all mine, to clean up. I was soon urging restraint on my little wild creature–often when none was necessary. The shirt was going to be washed anyway. Wiping up the floor only takes a minute. I am NOT suggesting that a child should do whatever she pleases, at any time. And a mama setting limits that help keep her sane is a really good thing. But that’s not what this was: instead, my desire for order had grown outsized, lost all sense of proportion, and was depriving my little one of all sorts of tactile, sensory, joy and learning.

And so, I began to battle myself. To bite off the word “no” and give myself a second to ponder the actual consequences, and let the small stuff slide. I also started making sure that I said “yes” to more extravagent mess, at least some of the time. And allowing myself to join in and play too–deliberately setting aside the constant stream of worry.

When I was a child, my parents’ friends lived right by a salt marsh. Low tide revealed great muddy channels, incised among spiky islands of marsh grass. My parents would let me roam this maze for as long as I wanted.  Even now, I can vividly remember what it was like in that hushed, slick universe of mud: briny smell of salt, walls of the channels rising taller than me, towering tufts of grass, close cry of blackbirds, the sharp intrusion of small shells under my bare feet. The feeling of my body navigating this new landscape: feet sinking, hands scrabbling, mud gooshing out from between fingers and toes. I rolled in the mud. I painted my face, my hair. I chased crabs and flotsam. When I came finally came in, I was never chided. An adult would hose me off in cold water, and then take me inside and dump me in a bath. I have no idea what happened to whatever I was wearing. It wasn’t a thing I knew to worry about.

I am striving to give my own daughter the same gift.

The very beginning. What a precious and powerful–though ideally fleeting!–time for a blog and its author.

The blog is live. All the behind-the-scenes decisions and indecisions have been worked through–from title to design.

So it is time to write, and, to write like people are reading it. Because they could. But no one is. I find this intensely and unexpectedly satisfying, and honestly, exciting. An actor or actress might feel this way, alone in an empty theater, weeks away from dress rehersals–this is the real deal, but also a private moment between myself and the craft. I can ease up a bit on the quest for perfection. I can experiment, play, but with that extra bit of motivation. Preparing for the time when someone will be watching.