Family Traditions

My daughter took her inlaws to my parent's condo in Red River, NM this week. They are having such a great time, and her husband's aunt said to her, "Do you know how lucky you are to have gotten to come here all of your life!?"

I was reading an article in

backpacker that said we are now in the 2nd generation of "nature-deprived" people. It got me to thinking. We DO have a lot of kids/people who haven't experienced the joys of the out-of-doors, kids raised watching TV, playing video games, playing on ball teams but not camping, hiking, rafting, even just skipping rocks .

I have such wonderful memories of Red River. My parents both went to Red River as children and loved it. My dad talks about when he and my mom were first married, my mom worked at a bank, and each month, she took $5 out of their bank account, and $5 out of their best friends account, and every summer, they would go to Red River, stay in a small cabin on a lake, and have a blast! Can you imagine an entire week of vacation on $60? But they fished, and hiked, and cooked over the campfire, and...well there are a lot of stories of adventure, too!

As a kid, I loved Red River, too. I felt like Daniel Boone as I hiked through the forest alone behind our cabin. The cabin with the most memories was an old cabin up in the woods, with a true "icebox" (one where you have to have a block of ice to keep things cold) and only a wood-burning stove, and OUTHOUSE, for Pete's sake, and a swinging bed hung from the ceiling. One summer, my dad even talked the people in town into renting us a horse and they let us keep it for the entire week! WE fished, we hiked, we jeeped (in the same jeep that we still use today, a 1942 Willys jeep), and in general we had a wonderful adventure.

My kids, they love Red River, too. My son was even married there, in a beautiful outdoor ceremony, next to a creek with a mountain backdrop. We have made many backpacking trips, had rain inside the tent, been hailed on, been lost, been cold and wet--sounds like a lot of fun, doesn't it? But at least my kids will never say they have been "nature-deprived".

And now, a 4th generation is enjoying Red River. My mom learned to skate at the skating rink there, and so did I, and so did Lyndsey. Apparently, little ER tried out the skating rink and had a lot of fun, too, on that old wooden floor. And they jeeped to Goose Lake (one of Mimi's favorite trips) and saw big horn sheep. I looked at my daughter's itinerary, and it was very similar to one my mom would have put together for HER family...the same jeep trips, fishing trips, same places to eat...a true family tradition, these jaunts to Red River, New Mexico...a place where I can always go and feel that I am home. I am close to my mom there, her memory is still fresh and I can feel how much she loved that place.

Here are two of the grandkids in that old Willys jeep in Red River and a sleeping angel...he isn't in RR this time, but still worth posting because he WILL BE!