which_chick | Hiking with the Mordecai

My friend Trys had her second kid a couple of days before Xmas. They're both fine and all but her first kid Mordecai is seven and not really feelin' the whole New Baby vibe. He's high energy and sort of asperger-y (he has a diagnosis and an IEP, I'm not over here assigning diagnoses to people who don't actually have them.) and sort of hyper. And his mom is exhausted with a brand new baby. And he's butt-hurt that he's not getting 100% of mom's attention because of the baby.

Life is rough, Mordecai.

Also, we wanted a girl and we got another flipping boy. Ugh. (We did not disclose this to the Mordecai. But Trys wanted a girl and her older sister Lala wanted a girl and I wanted a girl and we got another flipping boy. Ugh. But if boys is what we got, then we will play with boys. It's not like you can send the damn things back.)

I took Mordecai out yesterday (he's big enough for just a booster seat in the back seat of a car, so if my car goes out the road, I can take Mordecai for adventures) for a hike so that his mom and dad could run some errands in Altoona with just the wee baby Seamus (not his real name, which is Benjamin). I promised to tire out the Mordecai.

What did we do? We hiked. Thirteen thousand steps by my fitbit, probably more for the Mordecai, whose legs are shorter than mine. (There was a lunch break in the middle.)

We talked about plants, like greenbriar and how it gets eaten off by the deer because it's high in protein. Like mountain laurel, which is evergreen BUT ALSO broadleaf and also Pennsylvania's state flower. Like white pine which has soft needles and red pine, which has stiff needles. Like winterberry holly, which has pretty red berries this time of year. Like hemp dogbane, which has interesting seed pods. Like witch hazel, which has the remnants of November's flowers and some seed pods.

We talked about fungi, like polypore shelf fungus and earth stars.

We talked about lichens, which there are a lot of in my woods on the rocks. We took some lichen samples for later.

We walked through the swamp (waterproof boots for the win) and shredded cattail seeds all over everything.

We practiced walking along logs. We practiced crossing creeks and making good choices about using rocks for stepping stones (some rocks are wobbly and, in PA in January, the water is quite cold, so checking for wobbly is a good idea before deciding to step on rocks). He fell down a lot because doesn't step carefully on rocky ground. As the hike wore on, he got better with this.

We talked about state forest boundaries and how they are marked with white blazes and round metal tags on trees. We talked about how the state forests are for EVERYBODY to use and that we have to be respectful of the state's property so that the state forests stay nice for everybody.

We talked about our hike (along a creek, uphill out and downhill back because, no lie, I am not a complete idiot). "Can you see any houses?" "No." "If we were (air quotes) lost, how could we get home?" "..." "Okay, we've been hiking alongside what, this whole time?" "A CREEK!" "Yes. And if we wanted to get home, how would we do that?" "Follow the creek!" "Yes. Which way?" "The way the water goes." "Good job!"

We threw rocks into the ice of the frozen-over shale borrow pit and watched the air bubbles under the ice slide to the edges of the pit and blurp blurp into the air. "Are they alive?" "No."

We found blue jay feathers in the pines near the lake.

We looked at the beaver damage to the trees around the lake. I mentioned that the beaver trapping guy had gotten three beavers so far. (Season started just before xmas.) M: "I hope he's not killing them." Me: "Traditional fur-style beaver trapping, by virtue of how it works, results in drowned beavers every time. There are no live trapped beavers. That is not how beaver trapping works." M: "I wish I had some beaver teeth." Me: "Talk to your uncle."

We looked at the feathers and the lichen under my microscope. We talked about how lichens are apparently made of a fungi AND another fungi AND an algae and that people didn't really understand this about lichens until VERY recently.

We read all the no trespassing signs on my road. Slowly. We talked about what trespassing was and how invited guests are not trespassers. A distinction was made between PUBLIC (state forest) lands and PRIVATE (mine) lands. Also, side note, I've ordered this kid some sight-word flashcards because he can't read for shit. If I get the ones on a ring, we can do them while we're out and about hiking around. (He can't sit still and focus. That's doomed to failure. Perhaps hiking-and-intermittent-reading will work. One never knows.)

We picked up two mylar balloon carcasses and one traditional balloon carcass out in the woods. I expressed my unhappiness with people who let balloons free because that was like littering and bad for wildlife, too. "You said a bad word." "Yes. I am not good at doing activities with children. I will try to do better."

We talked about free-to-play games for mobile and how we DO NOT EVER give money to those games. We talked about grinding for power levels and why the game was made so that grinding was necessary. (To get you to pay them money so that you can skip that boring stuff.) "Then why do you play?" "So that I can practice not-spending-money." (Hero-wars online, I will never give you a red cent.) Edit: 3-31-2021. I lied. I gave them some red cents.

We talked about answers that were "comforting" or answers that were true. (He had asked why I said "I don't know" so often. And I was like "Do you want answers that make you feel comfortable or do you want answers that are true?" And he was "I would like true answers." So I said "Sometimes the true answer is that I don't know what the answer is. Adults do not know everything all the time. However, if you remember the question when we get back to the house, I can see if the internet knows more about the subject, but even then, some questions don't have easy or satisfactory answers.")

I am not sure that he got tired out. I did, though.

Not physically, but damn, it was like three and a half hours of nonstop questions and lookiting. I can only lookit so much. However, I kind of arranged the day for a known amount of Mordecai-ing. I can do about three and a half hours of Mordecai before I'm just... done. (If I have to do more than three and a half hours, I get snappish and tired. So, I planned for three and a half hours of Mordecai, whereupon I delivered him back to his people. Everybody had a good time and we called it a day before anyone STOPPED having a good time, so yay.