Ultimate Outsiders

I hate watching my children’s souls being sucked through electronic screens, through gadgets and into the unknowable world of the web.  Ironic, I know, as I key in this text.  And yet, I hope I am not alone in my loathing of the electronic memorizers in our children’s lives.  We parents stumble through the early mornings, coffee cups sloshing and eyes flitting back to the ever present microwave clock as we rush our offspring through their routine of cereal, basic hygienics and backpacks.  We spend the next few hours separated by miles of interstate and mountains of responsibility only to unite again over supper and screens.

 

 I stare at those stupid screens growing out of my children’s hands and watch their deepening hypnosis.  There isn’t a loving parent who hasn’t envisioned hurtling an ipod through the window and into the path of an oncoming train.  I WANT MY CHILDREN BACK!!!!!

 

But how?  How can I woo them from the world of apples, droids and galaxies?

 

 It is at the moment of deepest desperation that we return to our basic core and remember what is most dear in an effort  to seek that which might save our prodigy.

 For me, that core was easy to identify.  My happiest and most fulfilled days were spent as a teenager hiking the gentle mountainous slopes of northeast Tennessee.  I never trekked the Appalachian Trail and I am by rights a wus and a weenie.  And yet,  the creek, the hills and the trees exert monumental power.  Nature has demanded humanity’s attention since the beginning of time.  It has taken pen prisoner and captivated souls.  The basic elements of nature:  wood, sand, water and rock would be perhaps the only things powerful enough to steal my children back from the land of microchips and ear buds.

 We began a year ago in September with a walk, a gentle hike, expanding the physical demands to the legs, exposing the children to longer distances and different terrains.  We trekked asphalt, gravel, sand and dirt.  We explored history, geography, geology, biology, religion and psychology.  We opened up the world as a family and set a goal.

We would, as a part of the South Carolina Ultimate Outsider program, explore every state park in South Carolina.  Our state has 47 state parks each providing safety and diversity of natural beauty.  There are swamps, beaches, mountains and lakes that present themselves for exploration.  The parks had just begun to advertise a program- a challenge- for people to explore them in their entirety- all 47 park properties.  At journey’s end, you will be bequeathed a title.  The title, the coolest ever, was that of “Ultimate Outsider”!  Ironic, isn’t it?  Accept the Ultimate Outsider Challenge and welcome your children back into the life of family, real live chats and core values.  We have had enough of being outside our children’s worlds.  We as a family were ready to become Ultimate Outsiders.