Teach a child to wonder.

Patience, curiosity, and the lush laboratory of a suburban backyard have captivated three generations of this family.

I had always dreamed of living on a farm, where I could be as close to nature as possible, but my wife Lonita, an Atlanta girl, found the city more to her liking. So we compromised. We moved to the edge of St. Albans, West Virginia, about 20 miles from Charleston, where we bought a broad piece of land that had most of the characteristics of the farm but wasn't so remote from the conveniences my wife desired.

Our move was brought about by a job change. We moved from Richmond, Virginia, where I had worked for the Virginia Commission of Game and Inland Fisheries, to West Virginia, where I joined that state's Department of Natural Resources. As you can tell, I have always had a deep interest in the outdoors.

Shortly after moving into our house, I planted 150 white-pine seedlings on the lower end of the lot. My idea was to keep the trees pruned and shaped for five or six years and then sell them for Christmas decorations. There was a problem, however--every time my three-year-old son Mike got near the infant pines, he broke off some needles. Repeated scoldings and hand-slappings did little good. Then one day I noticed that Mike was fascinated by the new growth emerging from the pines. He caressed each tender shoot lovingly. Maybe, I thought, the answer to our problem lay in the boy's curiosity about growing things.

"Mike," I said, "how would you like to have all these tiny trees for your very own?" He brightened. "Okay, these pines are all yours now, to protect and care for, and it's up to you to see that they don't get hurt."

The change that came about was pure magic. From that day forward, Mike did not break a single needle, nor did any of his friends. He protected those seedlings at all costs, one of which was a bloody nose from a slightly indignant pal.

That was my first adventure with our children in the world of the great outdoors, but thanks partly to that first revelation, they were to become a thousand wonders richer. I guess I spent more time and worked harder to encourage Mike than I did with Carol, who was pretty young right then for such learning, but later on she seemed to learn more from her big brother than from me. And if he was interested, she was interested. Our backyard was a laboratory where youthful genius was brought to light.

Both plant and animal life were abundant there, and Mike's increasing love for and curiosity about living things continued to amaze me. To Mike, the backyard was where "Charley Cottontail" made his home and where the bobwhite quail called at dawn and dusk. It was where the violets and buttercups came up in the spring, and where Mike pointed out to his sister, "God makes it rain when the plants are thirsty." And it was the oak where the robins nested and raised their young, and the place where the "sassafras tastes pretty."

As Mike and Carol grew older, they never forgot that the dogwood has opposite branches and biscuit-shaped buds. They learned to recognize the heavenly scent of honeysuckle emanating from the roadside, and would often mention at breakfast that their syrup came from the sugar maple.

Mike didn't require much prodding to search out new mysteries or to ask questions about anything and everything. And as Carol grew older, she began to pay closer attention to our backyard lessons. I didn't know the birds too well, but we had a Peterson's Field Guide that was almost as much fun to study as the birds themselves. All of us learned about field markings and bird calls that thrilled us as we reviewed them together.

We almost lost one of our most fascinating attractions--the rabbits--when I cleared a portion of our yard to make room for a wildflower garden. After I'd cut the brush and mowed it to provide light for the transplants, the rabbits disappeared. If you have ever seen the excitement of a youngster as he watches a cottontail do flips in the yard, you realize what a loss that would be. To overcome the problem, I planted a multiflora-rose hedge, which brought back the rabbits in force but proved to be a terrible mistake in the long run. This plant can get out of hand so quickly that it takes over your lawn and your neighbor's lawn too, and the tangle of prickly brambles has other drawbacks that try one's patience.

A major trial came to our house when the rabbits cut down my wife's beautiful row of gladiolus. She happened to be watching from the kitchen window when a rabbit hopped up to one of the main stalks and chomped down with its double pair of incisors. The deep red blossoms quivered and then tumbled to the ground. Mike and his sister and I could see the humor in it, but Lonita could not. After that, we planted our flowers much closer to the house, and away from any cover where the rabbits could hide.

Similar experiences made it difficult to convince my neighbors that rabbits were worth the trouble, since they had lost several rows of vegetables. But the children convinced them. The sight of young bunnies hopping foolishly around the yard thrilled the kids so much that my neighbors in resignation agreed that our sacrifice was much smaller than our gain.

Some of the backyard philosophy rubbed off on Mark, our next-door neighbor's son, who developed a deep interest in plants and animals. Mike was determined that Mark ought to learn about his pines and the odd-shaped yellow-poplar buds, among other findings. He once tried to force a twig of sassafras into Mark's mouth to "taste how pretty it is."

An unfortunate thing happened when Mike showed Mark a handful of Virginia creeper, which turned out to be poison ivy. But we learn from our mistakes. I assure you that neither of those young boys ever forgot that helpful rhyme: "Leaves of five, keep it alive; leaves of three, let it be!"

In the lower part of the backyard, Mike and I were discussing the milkweed plants that grew there when I casually lifted the leaves to reveal the pale green eggs of a monarch butterfly. Not far away was a monarch caterpillar with its black, white, and yellow stripes. I explained that this caterpillar would soon evolve into a lovely chrysalis, and 10 or 12 days after that it would become a butterfly. This excited Mike. While I sought out a glass jar to put it in, he gathered his friends to explain how this caterpillar magically becomes a butterfly.

We kept watch each day, and the parade through my house was without end. Sure enough, the one-inch structure produced by the larvae came to resemble a "crown jewel," pale jade green and studded with glistening gold trim. Carol thought it looked like "mommy's earring."

A few hours before the adult monarch emerged, the chrysalis became thin, transparent, and brittle. Then, within minutes, the astounded children watched the monarch's wings break out and fully expand. At that moment, I found myself wishing that somehow I could have brought all the children in the neighborhood schools into my backyard for this beautiful experience.

Nothing keeps a kid's attention better than a game that allows him or her to learn and display knowledge. We played games with nature's bounty. "Let's see what we learned, Mike," I'd say. He was anxious to point out the duck-billed buds of the yellow poplar and the mitten-shaped leaves of sassafras.

From such games, Mike and Carol lost their fear of bugs. We often watched a large praying mantis lunge at a grasshopper, and it was rather intimidating. But after we found an egg case attached to a stem in our privet hedge and hatched it in a glass jar, the threat was gone. Watching 200 inch-long mantises crawling over each other as they emerged as tiny miniatures of their parents excited the neighborhood almost as much as a litter of puppies might have.

As any parent knows, children often imitate our actions. Since I was forever bringing home a new plant for the garden or yard, Mike watched and insisted that he could plant things too. So when I started my onion bed, Mike and Carol and a half-dozen of their "future farmer" friends got underfoot, wanting to help. Why not let them get fully involved, I thought, if that's what they want. Carol, too young to dig, became the "bag lady" with the three pounds of onions, while the boys grabbed rakes and hoes. With surprising coordination, the small group of cherub-faced kids set up their own pecking order and had the bed planted in a short time. The rows weren't too straight and the onions were not well covered, but the pride of accomplishment glowed on every face, including mine.

Adventures together led Mike and me far beyond our original studies. The simple observation of a praying mantis devouring a grasshopper and a flicker in turn eating the mantis yielded discussions of food chains. We traveled the world of wonders around us--like how the idea of flight embodied in a bird's wings is captured in the design of a jet plane. We learned to recognize all the birds around the house by sight or by their distinctive voices. Mike would stop suddenly and try to imitate the frantic call of a crow or the whistle of the bobwhites.

In pointing out the natural wonders in our backyard, my fondest hope was to stir my children's inborn curiosity so that their young minds would stretch, their powers of observation would increase, and they would begin to build castles of their own, in whatever area they might choose.

Although Mike loves the outdoors and all its creatures, he went on to study music, and now directs the Cedar Grove Junior High School band and chorus. Carol studied math and now teaches it in the Logan County schools. Whatever their professional choices, they will always have a love of and respect for forests, fields, and waters and all the creatures that live there. Moreover, as teachers, both Mike and Carol are certain to bring a special love into their classrooms, no matter what they teach.

Today the third generation of our family is learning about the natural world. Mike's son Michael and Carol's son Adam and daughter Michelle go with me to fish, to garden, and to learn about wildflowers. And we all like to think we can identify any bird around the house from its song or field markings.

I remember how my neighbors would caution me against going hunting, because my kids would be upset by seeing game animals dead after they had learned to love them. They were wrong. Knowing the cuteness of rabbits on the lawn did not bother Mike's perspective; he understood that rabbits were fun to watch, fun to chase with Sally, our beagle, and good to eat after the hunt. He would go with me to train Sally and work the flab off her before the season; the echoing bellow of her voice on the hot trail of a bunny always excited him as much as it did me.

My children saw and understood the life and death struggles that take place in the wild kingdom. Eating rabbits, squirrels, and deer was never anything but natural, and they relished the taste of all of them.

Today, as an adult, Mike the musician relishes the springtime chorus of tree frogs, which starts and stops as if directed by the "great conductor." Carol the math teacher can still tell the age of a tree by reading the rings in its stump, and Mike can spot a junco's ground nest of eggs so cleverly shielded from view by grasses.

Today they and their own children often remind me that to wonder is to inquire, and to inquire is to learn--and to grow.