For the better part of twenty-five years, G&G contributing editor T. Edward Nickens and I have spent a good chunk of our phone conversations discussing our children, specifically about raising them outdoors. We both grew up exploring the woods and water, Nickens in the Piedmont of North Carolina, and me on the tidal creeks and estuaries of coastal Georgia.
When we first met, I was a young editor in New York City, and a family of my own did not top my to-do list. I lived vicariously through Nickens’s tales of fatherhood in the wild with his daughter, Markie, and son, Jack. There were stories of family camping trips to the Grand Tetons and Florida Keys. Cell phone calls from the truck, where a young Jack would sometimes be seated on his dad’s lap, hands on the wheel, as they cruised the sand of Cape Lookout. “I’m driving, boss man! I’m driving!” Then there was a trip to Costa Rica, where Markie and Nickens tracked jaguars in the jungle.
When my son was born, in 2012, one of the first things I purchased was an infant life jacket. And some months later, Jenny and I strapped it on him, held him tight, and ventured out for what became possibly the world’s shortest boat ride (as Sam screamed for most of it). It was then that I began to understand what Nickens would tell me many times as I traversed fatherhood beyond the sidewalk: “You need to meet them where they are.” Sage advice his wife, Julie, had bestowed upon him.
My daughter, Rosie, joined the crew a few years later, and what I’ve learned since then is that the best I can do is open a door to the wild. What my kids do with that connection is up to them. Because they, as I have found, are not mini-mes. Nor, if I’m doing my job right, should I hope they would be. That’s not to say some things haven’t rubbed off since that maiden voyage with Sam. For now, I’ve got two young’uns who won’t pass a piece of litter without picking it up. They’ve joined me in the duck blind, and both can handle a spinning rod better than a lot of adults. Rosie wants to catch a mahi out in the Gulf Stream, and Sam is all about sharks (and saving sea turtles). And they can both spot a shark tooth on the beach and a fatwood stump in the woods.
These days you can find Nickens and me taking those phone conversations to the next level as hosts of Garden & Gun’s new podcast, The Wild South (see below), where we talk with dedicated outdoorspeople from across the region and beyond about their passions and, yes, about our kids (and our guests’ kids), too. I hope you’ll give it a listen.
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