Learn the Flowers

Sometimes I feel sort of mishami about not giving my kids the small town growin' up experience I had.  I live in a small town, yes, but it's surrounded by big towns, big suburbs outside of a big city.  I grew up in Pendleton, Oregon (Go Bucks!), a small community of 15,000 folks in a sea of wheat fields.  Pendleton is a completely self-sufficient community with everything a person could need.  It has a swimmin' pool--actually, now it's an Aquatic Center and it's awesome--the best kid-centric pool set-up I've ever seen.  It has ball parks, and several grocery stores. It has a pretty downtown with character and old buildings. It has a library, a college, a few museums, antique stores, Bi-Mart, one middle school and one high school, railroad tracks used by actual trains, and a river runs through it all.  I miss small town life. 

But, I must embrace what I have.  I thought about this on the trail the other night--I don't have all the Pendleton stuff, but Pendleton doesn't have this trail!  And I love the trail!  My kids love that trail and someday it may signify home to them.  Sometimes, it's just hard to be where you are.  Important to try, though. I like to think of these last lines from Gary Snyder's poem, For the Children:

"...To climb these coming crests
one word to you, to
you and your children:

stay together
learn the flowers
go light"