FIGHT THE STIR-CRAZIES BY GOING WILD

Covid encouraged kids to coop up inside. So if you want them to spend more time outside, you have to embrace the pandemonium.

- STEVEN RINELLA

I'LL ALWAYS REMEMBER our first official family camping trip. Two parents and three kids (ages five, seven, and nine) tent camping on a rainy Easter weekend.

Things started out fine. We pitched our tent off the edge of a muddy road in a grassy canyon bottom in a Yellowstone basin. On either side of us, the canyon walls rose a couple hundred feet and flattened out into rolling hills. The upper lip of the canyon was composed of exposed sandstone, eroded and loose; with a push, you could send head-sized chunks of rock tumbling to the canyon floor. It took the kids about ten minutes to find their way up there. Within an hour, a few rocks had come rumbling down. I climbed up to give the kids a lecture about the perils of trundling, a sort of technical term for rock rolling. Those rocks could strike their own siblings or parents, or they could roll down and hurt a complete stranger.

Once I was done hollering, I turned my ion to our youngest, Matthew, whose face and arms were colored a mysterious bright yellow.