Better Without Batteries

My friend Bobby and I were deposited one Alabama summer afternoon at his Aint Tink’s and told to “go play.” Though neither of us really knew how, we decided to fish in a small creek nearby. We figured it out as we went along and used what we could find close by–a crooked stick, a few feet of sewing thread and a safety pin scrounged from a bedroom dresser drawer. For bait, wild blackberries. Surely fish liked fruit.

We had expected nothing more than small fish to live in a stream like this, so when a big green crawdad motored out from behind a rock like a tiny robot and carried our hook and berry upstream into the dark shadow of a submerged log, we were horrified (and delighted) and ran all the way back to the house to breathlessly tell what we’d just seen.

I remembered this distant fragment of boyhood play while watching our granddaughter Abby create her own excitement and amusement on Goose Creek one afternoon of her summer visit. Her creatures were not as unexpected as the one Bobby and I witnessed, but I feel certain that fifty years down the road, she’ll remember her special afternoon of improvised fishing.

A couple of buckets, a few plastic cups and a tiny minnow net: we could not have outfitted her any better for hours of play than with the tools we gathered from around the house for free. We watched from the house, far enough away that she was in her own private wilderness. We could imagine her thoughts, and some she spoke aloud to the dog.

She was actor, director, narrator and audience as she made up the story about which fish (and crayfish) and how many went in each bucket and why. She decided when they had served her secret purpose and could be released– only to be caught from the same sandy pool again several more times before dinner.

Hours pass, she is oblivious. Wet to the knees? She neither notices nor cares. Her plan for the afternoon, to do whatever comes next to mind; and the dog’s: to stand ready in the cold water for as long as she might need him.

A place near home. A simple game, she makes the rules. The easy flow of mind and hands. So little space to be for her a wilderness, so little time to be Abby’s eternal present, an afternoon lost in play.

This excerpt is from Fred’s book draft for (working title) Bridging the Nature Gap now seeking publication.