Take the Kids!

Here at the transition from one season to another, we need to talk a little about the proper role of kids in the out of doors. Where and when, exactly, should a hunter or fisherman feel comfortable taking their children when camping, hunting, or fishing?

Everywhere. Absolutely everywhere, anywhere, anytime. No child left behind. If it's good enough for you, it's good enough for them. Everybody should be eating out of the same pork and beans can together. There should be pictures of it: One can, five spoons, five grinning faces.

You wouldn't think the subject would even be an issue, but the truth is the nation is raising a swarm of pansies that don't know the red end of a wooden match from a tent peg. There are millions of Moms scattered all over this land that are not satisfied with air-conditioned summer camps unless they come equipped with one camp counselor for every three kids.

I was put to thinking about this the other night when our daughter, Sarah, gave her baby and our grandson, Colt Jordan, a bath in our kitchen sink. It was just the right size, a lot closer than the tub in the bathroom, and reminded me of a long ago bath of her own way up yonder in Saskatchewan on the banks of the Churchill River.

Sarah's mother has a fetish about cleanliness… well, and about one's hair looking nice, too. Pam never, ever leaves the house "undone" from the top of her head to the tip of her toes, and she has been in some pretty rugged places with me far from the madding crowd, and far from the nearest phone before there were cell towers. Some of these places we reached by canoe; some by airplane, and some by horseback.

Remoteness of location was never an excuse for her not being clean and neat. She has never been a sloppy person, is not today, and would not stand for her kids to be either. She washed her hair everyday from a stream so cold behind our tent in Montana's Spanish Peak Wilderness years ago that it would make your scalp burn, and one day I heard the wrangler, old Tom Wilson, say when he thought no one could hear him, "That's the cleanest damn woman I've ever seen in my life."

And so it probably was. Tom never went to town, washed his clothes or his self, and so far as we learned on the trip (we were after trout) had never married. Probably he feared hooking up with somebody like Pam.

Anyway, Sarah was not a year old that summer in 1980 when Pam and I took a summer job working at a fishing lodge way up yonder. Pam helped cook and clean up cabins. I filled outboard gas tanks, unloaded float planes, cleaned fish, chopped firewood, and filled in as a guide when any of the Indians didn't show up.

At night we were all three of us tired and dirty, but no one hit the sack without a bath. Pam took very thorough "spit" baths with hot water, a dish pan, and a wash cloth. Sometimes an old decrepit shower would work by accident, and she would use that.

I usually jumped in the river which was right outside our cabin door at the foot of Robinson Falls. Yes, it was cold. I learned not to scream so as not to wake up the paying customers. Parts of me would disappear in the process, only to return somewhat later. I came to the cabin clean as a whistle, smelling like spruce, and jumping around like an Irish leprechaun.

After her "bath," Pam would clean out the dishpan, fill it again with clean water, set it on top of our cabin's wood burning stove to warm, and drop the nine-month-old baby girl into it. That would be Sarah. You know, the one giving my grandson a bath in the kitchen sink the other night. What goes around, comes around they say.

Somewhere around here, I've got a picture of Sarah sitting in that white porcelain dishpan atop the wood burner with the biggest, prettiest, baby smile you could possibly imagine. We had no TV, no radio, so that baby's smile is what we took to bed laughing every night.

Sarah turned a year old at that camp before we came home at the end of the summer. The day she did, Pam and the lodge owner's wife baked and decorated a cake, and invited about twenty Cree Indian kids to the party. Coincidentally, one of them, young Benjamin McKenzie, turned two that same day which was proper, don't you think?

Both of them were covered in chocolate, and green and white icing in less than a minute which meant that one of them was going to get a bath as soon as the party was over. I wonder who.

So, you see, the deal about this is, is that if you hunt or fish then take the kids whenever you go. Never, ever, leave them at home. There is no such thing as "too young." They are going to be too old before you turn around three times. If it is hot, take them. If it is cold, take them. If it is windy, take them. If it is snowing, take them. If there is not enough room for them and everybody else, then somebody else moves over and the kids go.

Stay as far away from motels, swimming pools, and televisions as you can. Avoid them at all costs. Sleep in leaky tents, or under the stars where they will see the campfire glow and spark, and the skunks when they infiltrate the camp after midnight.

Make the kids swim in the lake, river, or creek, and warn them about the snakes out of meanness and fun, not out of caution. Just before you force them into the water, make up stories about man-eating catfish and what a really big one feels like when it brushes up against your leg..

Make sure that they get sunburned, bug bitten, hungry, and stub their toes as often as possible. You want them covered in fish slime, dirt, and road raspberries by the time the sun goes down, so that everyone will have to line up after dinner, under lantern light, and take a bath somewhere, somehow, before they go to bed.

Years from now, way on down the road, these are the things they will remember more than all the electronic games you ever gave them. Take my word for it and take the kids.

© 2010 Conrad M. Vollertsen