Found: Flattened Bottle Cap

Like many children their ages, Bella and Evan have become reluctant to leave their home. Bella would like to be on the internet playing Roblox all day and all night (perfectly reasonable, as it’s the only contact she has with peers, and it is apparently a very engrossing game needing extensive parental supervision).

Evan is not crazy about screen time, and he loved our trip to the Chinese Garden, but he has massive hesitation about going out into the world beyond his back yard. He agreed to show me his new bicycle-riding skills, “only if we stay in my back yard, because it’s not safe out there. The virus is everywhere.” 

I devised a scavenger hunt as a way to get them out of the house and into nature, with a new Covid-19-inspired wrinkle: when you find an item on the list, instead of picking it up, make a photograph of it. I made a list that has names and colored drawings of what I hope they will find, e.g. mushrooms, pine cones, lichen, and leaves of certain colors, as well as bottle caps, cigarette butts, and random pieces of plastic. Bella found everything on her list except a black feather and a cigarette butt. “Nobody smokes in this neighborhood,” she told me proudly, "and we don't have any crows out here. They just live in the city."