Going Back to Pee (Or, why we do the things we do)

For the past month, I’ve been bringing my daughters to an hour-long nature program in the forest once a week. With a few other children their age, we make nature-inspired crafts, listen to an animal story, and explore the woods. We don’t participate in many structured activities, but because we’re city-dwellers, this one has been special to us.

On the very last day of our program, we donned handmade crowns, and set off together in search of butterflies. We had only been walking a short time when Emma announced that she had to pee! And she was not at all interested in squatting behind a tree, which meant we were in for a hike back to the nature center.


My head started swirling with thoughts about this imposition—we were going to lose our group, we wouldn’t see the butterflies, this was our last class, we were walking so slowly—it was easy to start feeling annoyed.


But then I remembered why we were there in the first place: to take in the beauty of nature, together. It was that simple. I took a cleansing breath in and out, and then we started walking back to the nature center to use the bathroom. Along the way, we listened to bird songs and we stopped to look at a spider web and we hopped like toads.


We never did meet back up with our group, or find those butterflies. But we enjoyed a nature adventure of our very own, and I can’t wait for the next one!