What We’re Teaching Our Sons. Owen Booth

       The Great Outdoors

      We’re teaching our sons about the great outdoors.

      We’re teaching them how to appreciate the natural world, how to understand it, how to survive in it. As concerned fathers have apparently been teaching their sons since the Palaeolithic.

      We’re teaching our sons how to make fires and lean-to shelters, how to tie twenty-five different kinds of knot, how to construct animal traps from branches and vines. We’re teaching them how to catch things, how to kill things, how to gut things. Out on the frozen marshes before dawn we produce hundreds of rabbits out of sacks, try to show our sons how to skin the rabbits.

      Our sons look over our shoulders, distracted by the beautiful sunrise. They don’t want anything to do with skinning rabbits.

      Out on the frozen marsh we explain the importance of being self-sufficient, and capable, and knowing the names of different cloud formations and geological features, and how to identify birds by their song.

      ‘Cumulonimbus,’ we say. ‘Cirrus. Altostratus. Terminal moraine. Blackbird. Thrush. Wagtail.’

      We hand out fact sheets and pencils, collect the rabbits. We promise prizes to whoever can identify the most types of trees.

      ‘Can we set things on fire again?’ our sons ask.

      The stiff grass creaks under our feet as we make our way back to the car park. The sky is the colour of rusted copper.

      ‘Can we set fire to a car?’

      ‘No, you can’t set fire to a car,’ we say. ‘Why would you want to set fire to a car?’

      ‘To see what would happen,’ our sons mutter, sticking their bottom lips out.

      We look at our sons, half in fear, wondering what we have made.