The summer issue of ML Blue Mountains (Ontario) is out now!
The Art of Doing Nothing Outside
The older I get, the more suspicious I become of overly optimized leisure.
Somewhere along the line, even rest started feeling performative. Summer now arrives organized in spreadsheets, packed into carefully curated “snackle boxes,” and a low-grade pressure to make every moment meaningful, optimized, elevated. Paddleboard at sunrise. Listen to this podcast while hiking. Cold plunge before kids wake. Journal. Host an outdoor dinner party featuring locally sourced stone fruit and a signature cocktail with thyme…
Meanwhile, some of my children’s best summer memories seemed to involve absolutely nothing. Not exactly nothing, but the kind of days adults (and many kids) have become weirdly bad at tolerating. Drifting. Waiting. Puttering. Sitting by the water long enough to notice the light changing.
Summer now arrives organized in spreadsheets, packed into carefully curated “snackle boxes,” and a low-grade pressure to make every moment meaningful, optimized, elevated.
I’ve started to learn there’s an art to doing nothing outside in this dopamine-seeking day and age, and like most worthwhile arts, it takes practice. Because let’s be honest, doing nothing still requires effort. Especially for those of us who struggle to experience anything without turning it into content, accomplishment or cardio.
But children, especially around here, still seem to understand something we’ve forgotten. The landscape helps with the raising of them. Between the escarpment, the valleys and the Bay, childhood still unfolds mostly analog.
Free-range bike gangs roaming between houses. Pier jumps that stretch for hours. Flat rocks collected in dripping swimsuit pockets. Tiny Blundstones abandoned beside muddy creeks. Kids lying belly down on paddleboards with nowhere particular to be.
The best days rarely announce themselves as important as they’re happening. No one says, “this will become a core memory.”
It’s usually just a bag of apples, a block of cheese and a pocketknife. Someone’s dog weaving through camp chairs. Waiting out weather under a tarp while rain moves across the lake in silver lines. Someone asking for snacks 12 minutes after lunch.
And maybe that’s the point. Kids don’t build memories around grand gestures nearly as much as we think they do. They build them around ordinary moments repeated with enough presence to become meaningful.
No one says, “this will become a core memory.”
The walk for ice cream after dinner. The creek behind the campsite. Neighbours dropping by unannounced. The feeling of falling asleep waterlogged and sun-kissed after a day that technically accomplished nothing. Children have a way of disappearing completely into the world around them. Into water. Into weather. Into play. Maybe that’s what the art of doing nothing outside really is. Not inactivity, but receptivity. A willingness to stop gripping the day so tightly.
To leave room for surprise. To let boredom open the door to imagination instead of immediately trying to fill it. To sit still long enough for something to arrive.
Summer always tries to convince us it should be bigger. Better. More curated. But the older I get, the more I suspect the good life is built mostly from ordinary afternoons. With people you love. Outside long enough to remember who you are again. –Bryn Honeywood
Sample spreads from the new issue of ML Blue Mountains:
Check out the full issue HERE. Pick up a print issue at the usual rad spots throughout the Blue Mountains/South Georgian Bay region.
Check the ML Podcast!
