Free-Range Kids - April 17 2021

 

Free-Range Kids

April 17 2021

It was a city of ravines,

water tumbling and puddling and bubbling its way

down to the cold forbidding lake,

as it has done

since there were glaciers;

veins of green

cutting through the streets

and tunnelling under its bridges.

When we were kids

they were dark mysterious forests

that felt almost limitless.

We'd skitter down the tangled bank

picking up speed;

a perilous slope,

booby-trapped

with loose sand and jagged rocks

and well-camouflaged roots.

Descend into our own subterranean haven

where adults weren't permitted.

Where the din of traffic receded

and the sound of water soothed,

great impassive trees

cooled the city's humid heat.

Even in the hottest summer

the rivers still trickled with life.

Despite the windblown garbage

and shopping carts half-submerged.

The rotting logs

and floating mounds of foam,

questionable water

with an off colour

and even odder smell.

That had run with salmon, once

but had become almost toxic

with industrial waste and run-off.

But we didn't know any better

and loved this convenient escape,

a refuge from the adult world

of stern rules and strict order

and kids seen-but-not-heard.

A wild corridor,

where skittish deer could wend their way

to the heart of the city centre,

emerging wide-eyed and bewildered

onto streets that swarmed with cars;

slipping on the pavement

or stumbling into traffic

or crashing into glass,

feet clattering

and raising havoc

and summoning police.

Who waved and whistled and hollered

trying hard not to draw their guns.

Those unmanicured ravines

were a remnant of wilderness

in a big concrete city

of looming steel towers

and modest well-kept homes.

And we were feral children,

free range, and on our own,

playing tag

and building forts

and randomly exploring.

Getting our very first kisses

from more experienced girls

who always seemed to know more.

A place

I long ago departed

for a life somewhere north.

Leaving behind a swaggering city

where many more millions now live

and the big buildings got even bigger.

I'm told the ravines and rivers remain,

but the water's close to clean

and paths have now been paved

and the deer mostly stay away.

They're still cool green oases

amidst the heat and rush and grime,

but tamer and more orderly.

A place where joggers jog

and lovers walk

and spandexed bikers bike,

obedient children play

under grown-ups' watchful eyes.

I grew up in a suburb of Toronto. Its ravines are one of that city's greatest assets. Our house backed on a creek, and it was a short walk to a tributary of the Don River. It was polluted back then (although it still smells suspicious to me!), and hardly as manicured and park-like as these same river valleys tend to be today. Child-rearing was very different then. No one had heard of anything so outlandish as a “play-date”; it was more “go out and play and don't come back until dinner.” Which is to say that we most definitely were not chaperoned or helicoptered!

The city has grown up and out to become one of the continent's premier urban centres. But the ravines are still there. You descend the bank into cool green shade, where the sound of the city is muted and wildlife abounds. A doorstep escape like that is invaluable. But I don't think children now are nearly as free to play as we were. Or, perhaps, as interested in outdoor play. The river may have been polluted and the garbage hadn't been cleaned up, but we didn't know any better. To us, this was wilderness, adventure, and sanctuary all in one.

I apologize for the unbecoming nostalgia. I credit for my inspiration a column by Marcus Gee (as well as a two-page illustrated feature) in this weekend's Globe. Here is Gee's piece:

The magic and mystery of Toronto’s ravines

• The Globe and Mail (Ontario Edition)

• 17 Apr 2021

• MARCUS GEE

When I was growing up, Toronto’s ravines were wild and dangerous places – or so it seemed to us. We lived in Moore Park, a comfortable midtown neighbourhood near Yonge Street and St. Clair Avenue. Our first house was on Inglewood Drive, beside Mount Pleasant Cemetery. A deep ravine lay just to the west. It bears a poetic name – the Vale of Avoca – but we simply called it “the ravine.” I passed over it every day on the way to school when I crossed the St. Clair Viaduct (“the bridge” to us). I often stopped to stare down into the woods and creek below, leaning over a heavy stone railing that was like the battlements of a castle. In winter, we would drop giant boulders of frozen snow over the side and watch them explode on impact in a most satisfying way.

At recess or lunch, we would scramble down the muddy sides of the ravine to goof around under the bridge, a massive structure with great black steel arches to support it. Our shouts would echo from its underside, which loomed above like the roof of an abandoned cathedral.

The brave kids (not me) would take turns swinging from a thick rope someone had slung from the bridge. A swing suspended from that height has quite an arc, and kids sometimes lost their grip, busting an arm or a wrist.

The school ordered us to stay out of the ravine, a place where students were sure to curse, smoke and worse. Rumours were always circulating about the shady individuals who were supposed to lurk down there, preying on boys and girls.

We went anyway, of course. The ravine had the irresistible lure of the uncharted and the unknown. To descend into it was to leave the orderly adult-ruled world on the surface and enter a whole other realm; our little Narnia. There were snakes down there, and feral teenagers playing hooky and homeless guys living in lean-tos made of tree branches and tarps. The only reminder of life above was the sound of cars trundling over the bridges.

Toronto’s ravines are tamer now. The creeks have been civilized, their banks lined with stone in places to prevent erosion. The twisting, narrow, foot-beaten paths I used to follow have been replaced in many places with proper trails suitable for bicycles and strollers. The sandy slope where, 50 years ago, my schoolmates would launch themselves into space on that rope swing is now covered with fieldstone.

When I went down into the “Vale of Avoca” this week to explore my old haunts, it was a splendid spring day, with life bursting forth all around. Passing joggers and dog walkers, I walked up from the bridge into the cemetery, then headed east, across Mount Pleasant Road, then walked down into Moore Park ravine. This was the ravine we wandered when my family moved to a second house in the neighbourhood, on Heath Street East.

It, too, has been tamed. The trail that runs through it is now part of the Beltline, which takes you from the cemetery all the way down to the Evergreen Brick Works in the Don Valley and beyond. More joggers, more dog walkers. Spandexed cyclists whizzed by, trailed by teens on their beater bikes. A bunch of kids played in the cave-like hollow under the roots of a big tree. One of them fell with a thump and commenced to cry (he was fine). Another boy further down the creek waded into the cold water in his running shoes. His parents shook their heads, but smiled.

Further taming is in the works. Toronto has a “ravine strategy” that aims to protect them and make them easier for people to navigate. Three cheers for that. Toronto has been rediscovering its natural glories during the pandemic and the ravines are among them. As the authors of the strategy put it, “Once seen as the biggest challenge to Toronto’s growth, these corridors of “disordered nature” are now treasured as one of its greatest assets.”

But let’s hope they retain some of the mystery that drew me and my friends all those years ago. Like the Leslie Street Spit, the man-made peninsula in the lake that has become an accidental wilderness, the ravines have a quality you can’t find in a groomed city park. They are a defining part of the city’s topography and history yet somehow apart from it, with a character all their own. That is something to cherish.

Further taming is in the works. Toronto has a ‘ravine strategy’ that aims to protect them and make them easier for people to navigate.