my mom made me go to this camp

Looks like he had an awful time, doesn't it? Months ago I signed Liam up for a nature/builder camp at my friend Liita's Little Bits Workshop in River Forest. I knew it would be a trek to get there every day and I didn't even know if Liam wanted to do it, but I wanted him to do it. Correction: I wanted to do it. I wanted to be six again and build a clock out of junk and hike into the woods and draw in my nature journal. Instead I got to do something even better. I got to see my six year old do these things and bubble over about it every day (in the tempered way a six-year-old boy "bubbles" over about anything other than LEGOs).


Some days Liam and I went on our own (him to camp and me to a local cafe) and some days we brought Elliott. Four out of five days we took the train. I think my boys would take the train somewhere every day of summer. I am trying to cook up some more train adventures. Maybe a new stop every week just for fun.


But really it was what was at the other end in River Forest that was the prize. Like this nature journal for instance. Liita made one for each kid out of old jeans - they put on the straps (made out of t-shirt "yarn") and sewed the button on the pocket (which held a pencil and whatever they collected, like Liam's pound of rocks). But the real work of art was what they drew inside.


Liam illustrated nearly every page with plants, trees, bugs and animals. Including what not to touch: poison ivy.


And what one would never expect to find in the middle of a suburban forest preserve: a buck. They saw two last week.

Every night Liam's high point of the day was "art camp." He was so proud of what he made and what he drew and what he saw. Even when I had to rouse him from sleep to hurry and get dressed and go, he never complained. Not a bit. He came home with a clock and a journal and a pocket full of rocks. Thanks to this camp his mom made him go to Liam came home seeing something a little more special about the world and the trash. Best of all, he came home happy.