We went to the Amboy crater but it was too hot to hike up to it so we just looked at it from afar (earmark this for “winter trips”):
We went to spy on the cabin. We couldn’t find any property line markers. But it was nice to see it again. I told the boys most likely the next time they see it it’ll look completely different.
When deciding to buy this place I was worried we’d run out of things to do in the area, but I needn’t have worried - the BF bought me a couple of guide books, and the whole area (and California in general, really) is a wealth of hikes, geological marvels, mines dug out by hand by eccentrics, abandoned encampments, hidden oases, fields of Star Trek-like desert flora. It’s really quite endless. And as the boys get older and more capable we’ll be able to do more and more challenging things. They are quite the rock scramblers and thankfully really enjoy it - the long, hot hikes maybe not so much.
On buying this property, I think a lot about legacy these days. I’m trying to document them in pictures with the place so we can all remember just how little they were when we acquired it, and how crazy the whole process was, and how we have to grudgingly give the pandemic some credit for making me even think of such a thing. Someday, if I don’t lose it or sell it, it will be theirs. Will they love it like I do, or consider it a nuisance to be unburdened of when I die? Will one of them live out there for a short time to figure themselves out? Or will they just consider it some crazy whim of their wannabe hippie mother that has nothing to do with them?
I think so much about what kind of kids I’m raising. Right now, they’re kids. They haven’t started to individuate or form real unique personalities or opinions - they like basic things, like memes and gamers and video games. They want Minecraft jackets and superhero masks. Will they at some point look a little deeper, get really into underground music and things, form obsessions not enjoyed by the vast majority of other people? Or will they live the rest of their lives being...you know...beige? Is the only reason I became obsessed with the obscure and the hidden because a) I suffered childhood trauma and b) I suffered childhood trauma in the 80s? Is being into cool vintage things not really a thing anymore? Will these kids become adult men working dull office jobs during the week and then playing video games in pleather recliners all weekend in college hoodies while working on a goatee? Is that terrible? Will I judge them a little bit? Probably. Is that when I admit that while I love them, my cultural influence on them has been pretty much zero, so it’s time to get to work on the grandkids? Maybe.
I see fellow parents in my FB news feed with teen- or tween-aged kids, and the kids all seem to have cool-colored hair and wear 70s cast-offs and be putting on art shows and making skate videos. Will my kids be creative and cool like that...? I want them to be, but minus the trauma I suffered. Are those things mutually exclusive? And yet I want them to be themselves and not under my thumb. Oh, it’s a fine line, isn’t it?
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