When I was in high school the last of my grandparents died. And then in my twenties so had all the step parents—a lot of divorce in my family. My maternal grandfather’s third wife had taken a fancy to me and her second husband was fond of Gary. I’ve written about this before. It’s how we came to live in Oregon and raise a family here.

All of that happened together. We had gone back and forth about having children, but a key was wild spaces. My husband grew up in rural Washington and Arizona. Most of my childhood was in the growing suburbs north of Seattle. There were still cows at the end of the road, goats over the hill, and a small barn with palomino horses just a couple of blocks away. Best of all were the remains of second and third growth Douglas firs. The stumps of massive old growth cut down in the late nineteenth or early twentieth centuries were so old they crumbled rust red—I could dig right into them with my hands. Hidden away were ponds and swampy places. I watched frogs swim underwater and admired the water skippers on top. I tripped over the native blackberry vines, tore bracken from the earth and heaved it as javelins, put foxglove blossoms on my fingertips, and ate the sulphurous yellow blossoms of Oregon grape in the spring and the tart berries later in summer. My mother had no idea where I was most of the time. I brought home pollywogs and splinters. I came home filthy.

Gary had a similarly unrestrained childhood in the desert but also rattlesnakes and scorpions. I wrote my MFA thesis based on his childhood stories. Most of what I wrote was entirely made up, but once in a while, Gary would look up from reading one of my stories: “Did I tell you this? I’m sure I never told you this.”

I got it right.

Having children in the city, even in a house with cedar trees in the front yard and dogwood in the back, and just a few blocks from the zoo . . . that would never do.

Raising children at the beach felt possible. My mother would later declare the move to Oregon as a reason for having children “stupid.” It felt only right to me.

I hope my sons have their own stories of wilderness and sand, wetsuits and wild waves. Jellyfish and sand dollars, castles and glorious sunsets.

Overpopulation worried me even when I was still in grade school. I’m sure I have written about that before too. The world is too crowded these days and all the places I played growing up are paved over, fenced, and tame. Wild places are few and far between today. I just read that the Earth is predicted to have 10 billion people by 2050. That’s four times the population on Earth in the year I was born. Our sons and their wives and our grandchildren will live to see that coming crowded world. I probably will not.

May there be something left of wilderness for my great great grandchildren to enjoy. May they watch water skippers on the surface of ponds, frogs beneath the surface. Forest and water hidden away. May they know monstrous trees and places silent, still, and out of control.