One of My Favorite Places

In this fascinating urban location, one of my favorite places to go is outdoors, the Morton Arboretum. I love its rolling hills, paths, trees, ponds, etc. I love that I can take a walk there, never feel afraid, and hardly ever see another person. G and A are taking a winter camp there for three mornings this week. It's called Arctic Adventures, unfortunately most of our Arctic-ness has melted. Today was beautiful though. I love their camps because the kids spend most, if not all, of their time outside, even in the winter. The girls, from what I can gather enjoyed spending a lot of time outside. A's class tobogganed like penguins (on their bellies) and G's group found an owl pellet. I got back there early to pick them up and took a 20 minute walk. Just enough to soak up some Vitamin D, see a hawk and hear the geese. They have great horticulture (gardening), art and natural history classes for adults too.

A did tell me though, that she was the only girl in her class. That did not please her. Of 10 kids, how can there only be 1 girl? Don't girls like adventures, animals, and nature? I've found this with camps at the Arboretum before, they call them science camps and always seem to have more boys than girls. I could get all worked up about it (what messages are we sending?), but instead I'll think I'll try to get my friends to send their daughters, and to send mine. I can't imagine a camp that G, at least, is better suited to.

Tomorrow I will wear my hiking boots which are waterproof so I can take a longer walk. Being outside "in nature" is truly one of the best things for me. Do you think maybe I signed the girls up for this camp so I would have an excuse to take some nice winter walks? Maybe!