We took a trip to the beach this weekend with a group of friends. The Oregon Coast is wild and dangerous and beautiful, and never very warm, even in the summer. But we were blessed with clear, mild weather so the kids were able to go barefoot on the beach (with their coats and hats on), dig in the sand and even dabble in the streams feeding into the ocean.

This particular beach town (and much of the coast) is being built up with huge, awful, shoddy rental houses, that, I must admit, we use once a year. As everywhere, nature is being pushed farther and farther away as the strip malls, casinos and adjacent parking lots encroach. And it’s not like the way to the beach is pedestrian friendly, there are no sidewalks, there are huge SUVs tearing down the roads, and it’s scary to walk, especially with kids. So sometimes we find ourselves forgetting that we’re at the beach, with beautiful, if shrinking forest nearby.

But as some of the adults drove to Cascade Head for a longer hike, we found out about a road that went through the woods right behind us. Hova and I tried to get Georgia and her dear friend Baxter to join us for a walk to get out of the house and burn up some 4-year-old energy. Georgia, who has suddenly developed a fear of camping, even though she’s never been, and Baxter, who has bivouacked and canoed and cat holed all over Oregon, both had a shudder of fear.

“In the woods?” Baxter exclaimed. “Too scary!”

“Are there wolves in these woods?” Georgia worried.

I assured them, “Nope, no wolves, but we’ll probably see some squirrels and birds! Let’s go see what we can find!”

Baxter’s mom, E, encouraged them further, “You can go on an explore [to quote Pooh]! “And bring me back some amazing treasure!” mom W said.

With all four parents pushing, we finally, remarkably got them outside. Hova, Georgia, Baxter and I snaked around the sprawling houses and made our way to the gravel road. I could see them screwing up their courage as we got closer to the woods. There was no need to fear, for every 40 feet of woods there was another monstrous beach house trying to dominate nature. We scared some quail and could hear the ocean, but the power of nature was pretty low-watt here. We were obviously not going to run into a bear or a wolf. But the kids needed that titillation, so they decided that they would look for clues that dinosaurs had been there.

“Look! Evidence! A dinosaur footprint!” Georgia said of a pothole.

“Do you think a stegosaurus knocked that tree down?” Baxter wondered.

Georgia studied the brush and trees, recently trimmed all along the road. “Plant eaters must have been here.”

Hova gasped, the kids jumped, as Hova froze and quietly said, “Move very slowly, there are some deer!” And there, nibbling the unnatural lawn of the biggest house at the top of the hill, were three beautiful deer not fifty feet away. Hova and I stood quietly, and the kids moved on. “Wait! Look at their tails twitching, and how they are looking at us! Hello deer, hello!” I cheerfully chimed, as if the deer would be happy to see us. The kids played along with me, “Hello deer, hello!” but it was clear that they were disappointed that Hova’s gasp did not mean IMMINENT DANGER, and they just wanted to get on with their dinosaur hunt.

I could wail and moan that our kids are jaded, that they’d rather watch TV than see deer, or that they suffer from nature deficit disorder. But it might be that it just felt a little wrong, and a lot sad. The deer didn’t belong in that setting, the reverence dissipates when you see them standing on a concrete slab munching non-native grass next to the overstuffed garbage cans. If we had been deep in the quiet woods and spotted the deer maybe it would have been more impressive. But there among the asphalt, vinyl siding and fortified wall fences, it was a lot more fun to imagine hearing dinosaurs moving behind the trees.

Dinosaur image courtesy of JuanRax.