You are preaching to the choir, Christiana White . I’ve been a picnic freak my entire life. I am convinced that food always tastes better out of doors. I’ve had untold thousands of meals in my life but the ones I remember are the ones I ate out of doors. The picnics.
During the 18 years my daughter spent at home growing up we took her on countless picnics. In the early years it was at least weekly and often two or three times a week. Preparing a picnic was an extreme joy and I never considered it ‘work.’ Once the food from our picnics was consumed the entertainment began and that involved watching our daughter play out in nature.
Once, after finishing a truly delightful picnic meal we watched our little girl skipping in circles through the grass and leaves as she sang, “I’m full of fun, I’m a jolly old elf. I’m full of fun, I’m a jolly old elf. I’m full of fun, I’m a jolly old elf.” She kept singing those same words over and over until my wife and I were beside ourselves laughing.
Now my daughter is 30 years old and has two daughters of her own. While I was visiting a couple of months ago she was trying to think of something exciting to do with her family the following weekend. I suggested a picnic. She immediately dismissed that, saying, “Oh, that’s too much work.”
I wanted to cry.
Her daughters are now around the same age as she was back when she was a jolly old elf skipping through the grass. She, of course, doesn’t remember when she was a jolly old elf. She remembers very little of her childhood. Of course it is vividly etched into my memory and my soul.
I tried to explain the joy of picnics to her but she only came up with excuses.
“We don’t have the right equipment. There’s so much cooking involved. And then there’s all the bugs. And a big mess to clean up. And hubby’s allergies are so bad we can’t do anything outside….. “
I felt so sad for my darling little granddaughters.
To young people today if a meal can’t be prepared in a microwave in under 3 minutes then “cooking” is just too much work. If they can’t bring their goddam smart phones with them when they go out of doors then they complain they have nothing to do. They can’t seem to eat a meal unless there is a TV on. There is a wondrous, fantastic paradise of a world outside and they remain utterly oblivious to it. Nature deficit disorder is a cancerous disease that is eating away and destroying Western Civilization.
I am an old guy who lives by myself and goes on nature walks every single day and who still has picnics all by myself on close to a weekly basis. I am an old fogey.
