Art Hike

It was the night before Erin was going to be teaching a number of voice lessons back to back at home and Finn and I needed to make ourselves scarce for most of the day.

“Where are you going tomorrow?” Erin asked, probably knowing I hadn’t thought of anything yet.

Finn looked at me.

“We are going…on a…hike. On an art hike,” I said trying to come up with something original for him.

“What’s an art hike?” Finn asked.

“We’re going to hike and paint.” I said.

“Where?” Finn asked.

“We’ll figure that out tomorrow” I said, having no idea.

I didn’t really think it would be an art hike. I really thought that we would hike somewhere and Finn would get distracted looking for rocks or collecting sticks and I would carry the art bags and maybe get half an hour of sketching in while we ate lunch.

The next morning we packed lunches and snacks into our already full bags along side what we had packed the night before: watercolor paints and plenty of paper.

We hiked a familiar trail. Eventually we came to a nice place to rest beside a stream.

“This is it!” Finn said.

“You want to paint here?” I asked

“Yep!” he said claiming the perfect little spot under a tree.

After sitting for a while just observing the brook and a tiny water-fall for several minutes, he spread out all his art materials and got to work painting right away.

I was a little in disbelief. I had come up with the idea as something to get us out of the house. I didn’t really expect it to hold his attention very long.

But he was ‘in-it-to-win-it’ as Erin and I like to say when he’s in the zone.

We were all alone. Then an hour or so later in an elderly couple wandered by and sat for a while chatting and dipping their feet in the stream.

I noticed them observing Finn as they chatted. The sound of the water masked their conversation.

After sometime they got up to leave and the woman said:

“My father was a painter and I have many fond memories of painting watercolors along side him. This is a joy to see. Thank you!”

I got a little lump in my throat at her reaction, fumbling with my words saying something like:

“Oh I’m so glad.”

Then I saw Finn gathering up his things. But he wasn’t done. He moved to another rock and started another series of paintings.

A little while later we had our lunch. He talked about his paintings and what a good idea this was, painting outside.

He ended up with nine little masterpieces. Some realist, some expressionistic, one rainbow and one map showing where we were in relation to Mommy. My favorite was a little sketch of me sitting under a tree sketching him.

“We should do this every week, right?” he said.

“Absolutely” I answered.

Crag Day

"Happy Crag Day!" Finn said, descending from the bedroom upon awakening.

The day before, he’d expressed wanting to hike to the rock formation in a nearby preserve.

The forecast had promised perfect weather.

There were doubts about making it all the way to the top. It was a long hike for Finn and he likes to take his time.

So when he began to document the wildlife on a piece of construction paper he had folded several times to create a section for each entry, I was pretty certain we might be turning back before reaching the peak.

“When you see or hear something, you have to write it down,” he instructed each of us, like a mini forest ranger.

“Oh, look at the bird’s nest,” Erin said, noticing an unusually large one.

“Yep! Have to write it down!” he said bossily.

He eagerly dug for the pencil and paper in his pocket.

He stood there appearing to scribble for several long moments then said, “How do you spell bird’s nest?”

“Yep, it’s gonna be a long hike,” I thought to myself.

But very soon after that there was surge of energy and we were covering more ground than usual. It was a little slushy from melted snow but it didn’t really slow us down.

There were actual stretches of silence. Nothing but nature.

At his age, moments of silence are few and far between. From sun-up to sun-down there is a seemingly endless narration accompanying his play sessions.

But there we were tromping our way through some tricky passages with very little commentary.

One motivating factor may have been the lunch Erin packed.

“I can’t wait to get to the top” Finn said breaking the silence at one point.

“To see the view?” I said.

“No. To eat!” he said.

But pretty soon it didn’t really seem to matter if we made it to the top.

There was more wildlife to document, unusual trees to climb and a little trouble choosing the perfect hiking stick.

The day seemed complete just by us being there. Maybe it was because it was the first warm break in a brutal winter. Or we might have been feeling the wake of the recent events in Parkland, Florida. Maybe it was all of the above.

Whatever it was, it was the right combination of sunshine, togetherness and semi silence.

We navigated our way up out of the forest and onto the rocky top and there was a sense of satisfaction but not so much of surprise. It was kind of like: “Of course we made it to the top. It’s that kind of day.”

We didn’t need to reach the peak. So somehow it seemed easier to get there.

Our way back down was easy and uneventful. More nature documentation. Eagles. Or were they Vultures? There was an especially crooked tree.

But nothing stood out as the highlight. The highlight was the day itself.

Because…well…it was Crag Day.

Puttin' on the Ritz

There was a Sunday morning routine that took place in my childhood household, before the whole family piled in the car and headed to church. The shining of shoes was central to it. And that was usually followed by all the boys combing our hair with Vitalis. The scent of shoe polish still takes me back. I haven’t smelled Vitalis in a long, long time.

In preparation for our trip to Erin’s sister’s wedding last weekend I was putting a little polish on my shoes before packing them. And of course Finn wanted to be a part of it.

“Oh that’s a good idea! I think I might need to shine my shoes too!” he said, running upstairs to retrieve them from under his bed.

He yelled back down to me, “And I can do it by myself. Ok Daddoo? Ok?”

We had tried shoe shining a couple of times before but he was more interested in putting his fingers in the polish and using the buffing brush as a toy than actually shining his shoes.

“And I can do it ALL BY MYSELF,” he reiterated, returning to my side with his shoes in hand.

“Ok, that’s fine,” I assured him.

I finished my own shoes and stayed close just in case.

But this time he was more focused. It was almost as if the process had been percolating in his mind.

He did try to mix the polish colors briefly but when I stopped him, he moved on.

He covered every inch of each shoe with polish. Probably three times a much as was needed but I did appreciate the thoroughness.

Waiting for the polish to dry was a little difficult but it gave him time work on his cloth wielding technique.

Soon we both agreed that the polish had dried enough (probably five minutes) and he could no longer contain his exuberance.

“This is the part I’m really good at!” he said, whipping the cloth back and forth as fast as he could while generating a machine-like sound effect with his mouth.

It’s definitely more fun to shine your shoes while you’re wearing them. If you have to do several at once, it doesn’t really make sense but if you’re doing just the one pair it’s the only way to go.

As an adult, I’ve had my shoes shined by someone else just once, in my twenties when I first moved to New York City. I was waiting for a bus. There was a shoe shine stand close by and one of the guys kept telling me he could make my shoes look real good. He was right. But I remember feeling a little uncomfortable. Almost like it was too personal.

The Finn machine had wound down.

“I think that’s good,” he said.

“What about the buffing brush?” I asked.

He looked at me with eyes widened as if I had just said, “Wanna drive the car?”

“Yes!” he said, “The buffing brush!!”

Soon the ‘machine’ had revved back up, now in buffing mode. A few minutes later he pronounced the shoes done.

On the day of the wedding, I heard someone comment on his shiny shoes.

“Did you know that they’re BUFFED?!” he said.

Later he asked me if he could have his own shoe shine box.

“Not just yet,” I said.

This is an experience we need to share for few more years.

Building

On a recent afternoon I was raking, removing the winter quilt of leaves from the flower beds.

A few yards away Finn was busy with a project of his own. He was piling sticks and bricks on the patio where I had just cleaned.

I feel as though his response to any space being clean these days is: “Oh good, now I have more room to create.”

He and his friends have been building little forts lately from a supply of bricks beside the garden shed, leftover from some past construction project.

By the time I had finished my raking, Finn had constructed a couple of walls with bricks and incorporated some lawn chairs for end caps.

I resisted the inclination to stop him. When he chooses an activity within close proximity so I can watch him and be productive myself, it’s worth a little clean up later.

The bricks have become kind of outdoor legos for the boys. A few days ago they built “A bakery”. They made countless trips across the lawn, each carrying one or two bricks. It was a full day project. They all slept well that night.

With his walls complete, Finn carefully placed sticks across the top and eventually covered them with leaves.

I reminded him it was going to rain later.

“Well it’s a good thing I put a roof on it!” He said

Later, after we had gone inside, it began pouring rain.

He wanted to go out and check on his work. I told him to put on his rain coat.

“I don’t have to! I can just get in my shelter!” He said, as if he was having a eureka moment. “Then I can enjoy being outside in the rain!”

I let him go outside. His disappointment was immediate.

“Awww Daddoo! The rain is coming through the top!”

“What happened?” I asked.

“Not enough leaves! I have to put more leaves on,” he said.

I can remember building forts as a kid. You stack some things together and your imagination fills in the rest.

A few times, my brothers and I made forts under kudzu. Kudzu is a vine in the south that covers entire trees and sometimes whole forests.

From outside it looked like the perfect shelter. On a hot summer day it was cool underneath.

But it was always a surprise to us after a rain to find our fort and whatever we’d managed to drag in there, sopping wet.

Finn piled more leaves on his shelter. More rain came and this time with wind. The roof fell in.

The next morning as I watched him survey the damage, I could almost see the wheels turning in his little head. He talked aloud trying to figure out what to do next.

I heard him mutter something about stacking large stones on top. Dismiss that plan. Then his interest was pulled elsewhere.

More striking to me was watching him build and discover. Experience disappointment. Learn from his mistakes.

And when it didn’t turn out the way he expected. He moved on.