The Bembreneth Way

The ultimate goal

In this day and age of the virtual computer world of video games, most “adventures” are relegated to sitting in front of a monitor and manipulating animated characters via some sort of hand held controller.  Gone are the days of children playing outside and acting out their fantasies of being a professional athlete, a professional dancer, a super hero, or even a world-famous archeologist. These can now be done indoors, online, and with other people that they never physically interact with.

And while the hand-eye coordination and finger dexterity of these virtual world conquerors makes even a jet fighter pilot green with envy, there is still nothing better than getting outside and seeing, hearing, and feeling the real world.

I re-discovered this point thanks to my 12-year-old daughter Jenna and her friend. While the two of them were walking down our gravel filled lane, Jenna’s friend happened to look down and spot a rock with what appeared to be an impression of a sea shell embedded in it. They brought it to me with great excitement and bewilderment.  I stared at it shocked and amazed.  This looked like a perfect fan-shaped fossil impression of a clam.

While they ran back outside to look for another one, I looked on the Internet for information about Louisiana fossils. To my surprise, most gravel comes from a huge rock strata formation in upper Louisiana and contains rock that is millions to hundreds of millions of years old. And it contains a variety of fossilized organisms including snails, clams, corals, insects, and my all time favorite, the trilobite.

At this point, I was hooked.  The quest for the trilobite was on.  When I told the girls about how old the fossils were and what other fossils to look for, their excitement grew even stronger. I told them the ultimate glory would go to the one who found a trilobite.

So there we were. Three of us sitting in the lane feverishly looking through gravel and trying to become a world-famous archeologist by finding a trilobite.  At one point, I stopped and remembered my childhood.  My friends and I spent many hours and dug many holes underneath our cinder- block raised houses in New Orleans.  We wanted to find dinosaur bones and become famous.  All we found were bones of recently dead animals. And if we dug too deep, we would hit water.  And now, here I was with my daughter and her friend, and we were finding fossils basically in my driveway.

Although we did not find a trilobite, we did find other fossilized shells, corals, and wood. But the quest for the trilobite goes on.

This is a wonderful thing to do ” WITH”  your kids.  It is fun, interactive, and educational all in one.  And you can still include the computer to look up what you find.  To recap: fun, time with your kids, educational, outside, and can involve the computer.  Parents, you can’t beat that!

Go to this website for more information on Louisiana gravel fossils  http://appl027.lsu.edu/MNSEducation/Saturday/Hunting%20for%20Fossils%203.pdf

Though computers are a wonderful thing for all of us, don’t forget there is a whole world outside of the computer also.  And it is amazing, especially when you see it through your child’s eyes.
And that is: The Bembreneth Way