Where to live

This is a follow-up to yesterday’s post about raising outdoor kids. The choice of where to raise a family and in what kind of environment is a complicated one. Rinella gives advice on how to involve children in nature whether on rural farmland, in an urban city, or in the suburbs in between. While there are ways to bring the outdoors to life anywhere, there’s still a continuum of how large the impact will be based on where one lives.

My personal experience as a child was mostly in a small, suburban (almost rural) town where we had a comfortable-sized yard, maybe a half-acre. The neighborhood mainly consisted of an oval with houses lining both the interior and exterior of the roads. Perhaps as important as the physical space, there were many other families with kids my age who naturally became my friends.

While we would definitely spend time at each other’s houses playing video games or watching movies, most of the camaraderie was centered around outdoor activities. There was a large empty lot in the middle of the neighborhood where we played whiffle ball, touch football, or other games all throughout the year. A few kids had basketball hoops set up in their driveways where we’d play for hours. And there was a large wooded area where we would build forts and scavenge for treasures.

In my teenage years, we moved to a house with about seven acres of land where I utilized the backyard as a driving range to practice my golf swing. I wouldn’t say that this extra space dramatically improved or degraded my quality of life, but it was a different feeling than the closeness of the neighborhood I grew up in.

I don’t know what’s ideal, and it probably varies for each person or family, but what I do think is valuable is considering all the implications of where one lives and how that physical space affects relationships, activities, and other aspects of life.

So long for now.

-Felix