By Meagan Shanahan

This past year, the year of the worldwide pandemic that just continues on and on, has been incredibly tough. It was during the first lockdown in Ontario that my love of getting outdoors with my babies really took off. I was 6 months into maternity leave with my second child when the world shut down and suddenly overnight, I found myself home with a 4-year-old and a 6-month-old day in and day out while my partner worked 5 feet away at the dining room table. Where maternity leave had previously meant coffee dates, playgroups and music classes with the local neighbourhood moms, the pandemic changed all that, shut it all down.

Pandemic stress and anxiety did not skip over our children; my son was picked up from daycare one day and never went back. On a Friday afternoon, he said goodbye to his friends he had been in daycare with since they were 12 months old and then he never saw most of them again. It has been tough on him and he has struggled to understand. I have struggled to explain, to support, to comfort him. Kids are resilient but we are asking a lot of them right now and expecting a lot of ourselves. In the middle of such an uncertain and scary time I did not have much of a support system to lean on. I had to find ways to manage my mental health in a different way while managing my children’s mental health and so, I headed to the outdoors and leaned on Mother Earth.

We were very lucky to live in an area that was urban but surrounded by green spaces. There was Lake Ontario at the foot of our street, there was the Humber River behind our home, and there was no end of small ponds and interesting creeks to get lost alongside for an afternoon. Each day I would pack a backpack with snacks and water, and we would head out. I would bring the kids to the magnificent Humber River and we would spend the day exploring the shore; looking at the different rocks dotting the water, admiring the plants growing on its banks and trying to spot fish in the water. We would have a picnic and talk about the reasons why its important to protect our Earth, protect the lands we call home.

Other days I had a lot of heaviness sitting on my shoulders and I would take them to Lake Ontario where we would stand in front of this Great Lake and just let it ease our worries – this lake is always able to calm me, and it seems to reach my son in the same way. We would talk about fishing and skip rocks across the lake imagining that they were reaching his cousins in Buffalo. Some days we would visit this tiny little pond halfway down our street, Catfish Pond, that was inhabited by ducks, the odd swan, sometimes coyotes on its banks and of course, catfish. It was the perfect spot to sit and talk about ecosystems and the different animals that call this same pond home. We would wander through the urban park and I would read the education plaques out to my son learning right alongside him. We took some hikes overlooking Ontario’s Greenbelt and talked about the importance of defending our environment and working to save it.

The province started opening up ever so slightly as the summer arrived, and we expanded our time in nature to include day trips spent exploring local Conservation Areas and Provincial Parks. We camped in Provincial Parks all summer long – my son learned to fish off the shores of Georgian Bay, he saw his first Black Bear in the Kawartha’s, he swam in the tiny lakes dotting Ontario and he explored all of the forests as if he knew them all his life. We talked a lot about respecting the animals’ homes, reminding him that we were visiting these spaces and we should always thank the animals for letting us sleep alongside them for a few nights. My son loved that; he loves to talk about where the animals live.

At the end of the summer, we bought a house and moved. We settled in a smaller city surrounded by even more green spaces and trail systems and nature. My son went to Junior Kindergarten and then schools shut down as winter descended on us. I did my best to support the remote learning and he did his best to take part every day but kindie kids are not meant to learn via the computer. They are meant to learn through play, exploration and curiosity about the world surrounding us and this cannot be taught virtually. Those days that I saw him struggling, I would end the school day, bundle him and his baby sister up and head for the outdoors. He would ask to visit the forest and so we would hike the local Conservation Areas weekly. He would ask to see the beach and so we would head down to Lake Ontario and let it give to him whatever it was he needed.

I do everything possible to continue growing this curiosity he has; I want this excitement about getting outside, getting into nature, to follow him and grow alongside him and become part of him. His curiosity has been sparked this year and his need to explore nature has grown with every single hike we take. He wants to know how trees grow so big, and how tadpoles turn into frogs and he questions why there is no fish to catch in a creek or why someone dropped their coffee cup on the forest floor. He has learned about the resiliency and the fragility of the Earth and he has developed such a love of this Earth, of these lands. It is beautiful to see and cultivate.

About the author

Meagan Shanahan is a social worker living in Hamilton Ontario, Canada with her partner Tim and their two children Theodore (5 years) and Caoimhe (18 months). She spent her childhood summers camping in the near north of Ontario and developed a lifelong connection to the stillness of a forest and the strength of a lake; connections she is now passing on to her children. Meagan and her family spend their free time exploring all of the forests, lakes and nature that Ontario has to offer within their local area and their favourite Ontario Provincial Parks throughout the province. Meagan hopes to encourage other parents, especially mothers of young kids, to get their kiddos outdoors and on the Earth as much as possible by sharing her families adventures online at www.outdoorfamilyadventuring.ca and on Instagram @outdoorfamilyadventuring.