A Baby’s First Sensations of the Natural World

[film reel ticking] [light music]

[birds chirping]

[train rustling]

[Narrator] I often get an itch.

It's like the itch a dog gets for a walk.

[woman yells]

When our baby was born- Wow, what a face!

[Narrator] The itch went away for awhile.

He was so overwhelming, he muted it.

But soon it came back. [birds chirping]

The itch itched again.

[gull cawing] [light music]

Scratching the itch now meant taking baby along,

first on the chest, then on the back.

For the first few months

we could only take him to nearby places.

He had to nurse every two hours.

[baby coos] [light music continues]

As he grows more able we can go ever further.

We brave all sorts of weather.

I introduce him to the rainforest in the rain.

I take him to meet the mist, snow,

snow line, sand, low tide.

Where the river meets the sea.

Imagine all this for the first time.

[light music continues]

What is beauty to a baby?

I take him to the red cedar, up high to the yellow cypress

and down a logged trail to meet

a thousand year old Doug fir.

[baby coos] [light music continues]

When we're going out we put a wool layer

underneath the fleece pajamas he wears all day, every day.

Maybe an extra pair of socks.

On top, we put a warm jacket and a rain suit.

Then I tuck him into my jacket.

Still, he gets cold.

[baby cries]

[gulls cawing] [water trickling]

Nothing is more vibrant, vital, than baby to me.

He centers everything.

He's a prism.

[light music]

The world shines through him.

[baby coos]

[seal yawns]

Nature looks new, details are different.

The world appears as textures.

How it feels to baby's fingers, to baby's bite.

I sense it more than see it.

Danger is different, too.

Quieter, but deeper, closer.

Overwhelmed by love, wonder and worry, I document.

In voice memos I recorded what I'm thinking.

I study my relationship with baby,

our relationship with nature,

and the relationship I'm trying to build

between baby and nature.

That's the noble reasoning that I'm taking him outside

to teach him to be outside,

to make it as familiar as everyday

as anything and anywhere else.

The less noble reason is that I'm just scratching the itch.

At the spring tide we walk out as far as we can go.

Near where we buried his placenta.

[light music]

Distracted by immature eagles eating a flounder,

I don't even notice baby heading straight for the surf.

[waves crashing]

When I look up, I'm terrified.

[baby shouting]

It seems the sea could just grab him.

Take him from us like that. [fingers snapping]

[light music continues]

We sit to wait for the seals that come at sunset.

Baby slowly creeps away, begins to gnaw on seaweed, rocks.

I gaze across the inlet.

That's the best place for baby's introductions

and to scratch the itch.

But mountains mean risk and hazard.

I don't know if going to the mountains

is the right thing to do.

[light music]

[crows cawing]

Today we're trying our longest, steepest hike yet.

[light dramatic music]

[birds chirping]

He was born here, but he's not of here.

Like us, he'll have to learn to navigate this.

He's an immigrant in a way,

the first of our families to be born in this country.

And in our country, his mom is first generation,

my mom is first generation.

His culture won't tell him how to live here.

He'll have to learn.

We're trying to learn together about the rainy season,

about when the salmon come, the huckleberries, the fires.

I don't think I'm trying to teach him anything,

just show him.

[water splashing]

There are old ways.

Ancient ways to bring baby into the world.

To teach these relationships.

Stories.

I read of them among other cultures and people,

especially those of whose land I walk upon.

The Musqueam, Tsleil-Waututh and Squamish nations.

Their stories are wonderful, precise.

They make perfect sense here, but they're not mine to tell.

I've lost these stories myself.

I've come from a cobbled culture.

What stories can we tell to center him?

How do we share other people's stories of this place,

the land that's become our home,

in a way that's respectful and thoughtful?

[bird caws]

One way may be to start with the names.

Everything's got the wrong names here;

the river, the inlet, the trees,

the mountain we walk upon and the mountains beside it.

With the wrong name comes the wrong story.

[light music]

We buried your placenta on the lowest low tide,

tying you only to the horizon.

To ephemerality.

When you were just weeks old,

our midwives invited us to a gathering.

There, a matriarch, Elder Roberta,

welcomed you to the world through ceremony.

She told us that you had come to teach us.

You would teach us how to give care,

be patient and bond as a family.

I will tell him these stories

and of these walks of when he met the world.

[light music] [birds chirping]

[water splashing]

On stories like this, when people go up into the mountains,

you want something to happen.

But with a baby, I want nothing to happen.

I don't want adventure, at least as I used to have it,

I just want a nice walk to get where we're going

or somewhere worth getting to

and then to turn around before a tantrum starts.

[baby coos]

This morning, lying in bed,

my partner asks if I've read how many dogs mountain lions

have taken in a nearby town.

It's up to five now.

One plucked off the leash. [water splashing]

She asks: When you stop and put baby down to take

a picture, aren't you worried?

This feels like an ancient fear.

A big cat leaping out of the bushes.

My fears are more pedestrian.

[speaking gibberish]

[bird hooting] [rain dripping]

I wonder if this is care taking.

A good example of being a father,

a way of positive practice.

[baby cries]

Or if it's still selfish.

A way of persisting in my own needs and desires

while neglecting his. [water trickling]

[light music]

I'm scared to share this with the grandparents.

Will it seem I do not love him enough to care for him?

To not appreciate the impossible gift that he is?

It's the very opposite.

I love him so deeply that I now question every action.

Is this in his interest?

Does it support him?

If not, why am I doing it?

This is how baby teaches me to better understand myself.

Perhaps that's what I'm exploring here.

How baby's changing me, the way I go outside, and do I it?

If he asks me to stop scratching the itch, can I do it?

In the wee hours of the night

while I bounce him to settle in

and lull him back to sleep.

Feeling waves of love, this is what I think about.

[light music]

The mountain gets steep.

The snow gets deep.

Baby grows fussy and I'm growing tired.

[baby cries]

From the grandmothers, we get an aura of protection.

Channeling their ancestors, they do voodoo

and burn us fun rituals to ward off risk.

[Woman] Go like this.

[speaking foreign language] [fire crackling]

From their home, from their cars, from their house.

Everything [speaking foreign language].

Then I turn on the fan 'cause they collect smoke.

But it should work there.

Once the fire starts, that means it all starts.

[wind rustling]

[baby coos]

[Narrator] When we crest out of the forest

and find the sun, we find the wind.

I feel them watching.

Hear their worries and warnings.

[wind rustling]

I feed baby his first outdoor snack,

a waffle, to appease him.

It seems to work.

[wind rustling]

Perhaps it's the power of the peace these places bring me

that leaves me so eager to share them with him.

[wind rustling] [baby coos]

I'm tempted to continue on

and I'm surprised how hard it is.

But I keep a sound promise.

We turn around. [birds chirping]

[light dramatic music]

[bird caws]

It's another day and we're in another forest.

The next day.

[rain pattering] [light dramatic music]

I think walking is a form of worship.

[crow caws]

The stumps sting.

100 years ago we'd be walking through

a 1,000 year old forest.

Now we walk through its ghosts,

specters of cedar and great Doug fir.

Someday he'll ask about the stumps

and I'll have to explain.

Still, there's resiliency here, strength,

and something like honesty.

To walk here is to face this, to confront it,

to acknowledge the relations others held

with the land before.

The relations we now live upon.

It's not so much forgiveness as facing the reality.

The world we live in now.

Leaving the abstractions of ideas, the way things were

or should be.

Of some kind of Eden to return to.

A mythic past.

[rain pattering] [light music]

The mountain lion worry was yesterday.

Today we find tracks.

[baby coos]

We follow them until we lose them.

[water trickling]

The shadow of the cat brings a quiet fear.

Not unlike a fear of the sublime.

This may be the closest I ever come.

It's not the best day to meet one, anyway.

[bird cawing] [light music]

As I get into this, I see myself making a familiar mistake.

Why must baby meet nature over there

across the inlet, up into the mountains?

There's such natural beauty and curiosity, activity.

In our neighborhood, on our block, just at our doorstep.

Danger diminished.

[birds chirping]

Why go beyond?

[light music] [birds chirping]

[light dramatic music] [crows cawing]

[birds squawking]

The itch itches for a reason.

Reverence is different in the rainforest, at the sea,

up in the mountains.

[light dramatic music]

And so we go.

With baby along it's become a dance between

care and desire, sacrifice and self.

Am I going with him, for him, or despite him?

I'm far from being able to communicate all this to him.

I still don't know how to talk to him.

I guess this has been a way of trying.

[mouth crunching]

Baby Rooney, do you have anything else you'd like to add?

I don't know if he'll always want to walk with me.

I'll bring him as long as I can carry him

and then I'll have to ask.

[baby coos]

Already, I can't imagine not walking together.

What's the point if we're not sharing it?

It feels good to walk with him,

but the best feeling may come each time we return home

safe and sound.

[baby coos] [light music]