I’m Anabella Huckvale, and Raising Kids Outdoors is where I keep field notes on getting my own kids outside, on purpose, on the days it’s easy and the days it very much is not.
I’m not a wilderness guide and I don’t have a curriculum. What I have is a backyard, a rotating cast of borrowed hiking trails, two kids who did not sign up to be test subjects, and a habit of asking small questions before I try something: what happens if we let the trail choose itself for a while, what happens if I hand over the map, what happens if we go out anyway when the forecast looks unpromising. This site is the record of what actually happened.
The notebook covers the whole territory of outdoor family life: backyard and nature play, trails and hikes, family camping, bugs and plants and dirt, the seasons outside, gear I’ve actually tested, outdoor learning, and the wild-weather days that don’t go according to plan. Some experiments work. A fair number don’t, and I write those down too.
Everything here is written by a real person, no ghost-written filler, no pretending every outing went smoothly. If a note is honest about what happened, it’s doing its job.
You can reach me at [email protected].