Adventure in History

April 17, 2023

Greetings from auld lang syne,

This is a story within a story.

Recently I was invited to speak to a group who ordinarily would be interested in history. I will testify here, I am not an authority in history or much of a student of it. I am, at best, merely a witness to a tiny slice of it. That said, it set me to think about my place in history, not as a memorable character, but as one who notices, is amazed, and tells about it. Which led me to Adventure Walks.

I think of history in the classical definition as being the study of significant events or people that shape the conduct of human experience. It seems to me that those important stories would not exist, could not exist, without the context of every other story, including yours and mine.

Many of the stories that stay with me are huge, ambitious events, others are simple almost unnoticed moments. But one of my favorites is something only a few people in the world know about. On the surface, it may seem like a modest chapter, tucked inside far more significant moments in the world’s giant tome. But in truth, it is more.

When our four children were young, in the middle of their first decade, we would sometimes find ourselves with time to create fun. This was the birth of the Adventure Walk. The walks were not well organized, and they didn’t always have a direction or a destination. At least not overtly; it may have been a coincidence that we almost always showed up at the ice cream store before we went home.

I would lead the four of them across the corner of the soccer field near our house, then down onto a path that cut through a lower field and then into a small patch of forest. Katherine was a couple of years older than her brothers, so she would help me herd them along.

Often, we would have to cut our own path through the field, startling small creatures that scampered unseen out of our way. The wild grasses were sometimes taller than my three sons.

The summer sun baked us in the open. Butterflies and bees floated around us; we could usually hear the cicadas buzzing. In the distance, the pale piercing notes from hawks who roamed the skies above us.

It was cooler in the woods. We found our way to paths made by other feet and wound our way under the canopy to the small creek there. Depending on the rainfall we could jump across the water, but often had to make a crossing with rocks and fallen branches. We named the stream ‘Adventure Creek’ as if we’d discovered it.

When we were about halfway to town, we would need to take a break. We would sit in the grass in front of someone’s house, pluck dandelions, see what ants do when you poke a stick in their dirt mound. It was a good time to lay back in the grass and see what the sky had to tell us.

We created a tradition here, a bit of theater, to help pass the moments. My children would name a state and then I would tell them a story from my adventures there. Sometimes they would choose a state I’d never been to, and so they could choose another, or I would just make up a story about something else. These moments, tiny bits of history within history, my stories woven in with the story we were living, became a new history.

Time would eventually nudge us and we would get up off the grass, our butts a little damp, and continue our journey. The houses along the way were mute witnesses. most were closed up against the heat, insulated from our presence by the sound of air conditioners. Someone would pick up a stick, someone would kick a rock, as was our responsibility as adventurers. We would go past a house with a dog in the yard, who would greet us with enthusiasm due to explorers of our ilk, and we would pay our respects and walk on.

We would come into the ice cream store, making more racket than a family twice our size. The boys would pull themselves up on the cabinets to look into the coolers and choose whatever flavor caught their attention. Someone, Harrison I think, would ask for a fruit smoothie.

We would sit on the picnic tables outside and eat our ice cream, liberally applying the napkins against the rebellious direction of the drips. As soon as the last bite was gone, they would begin climbing on the little half-wall nearby, balancing, tempting fate, and sometimes pushing each other off if fate wasn’t tempted enough.

The walk back could be quieter, all of them with remnants of ice cream on their faces, or in Sawyer’s case, nearly everywhere on him. We would trudge through the old neighborhood, find our way into the woods. Past the little camps created by some other kids, “Orphans, probably,” according to Harrison, and back to Adventure Creek.

We would sit on the rocks along the shore with our feet in the cool water, an experience of such pleasure that it defies words, you simply have to find a way to do it. Harrison and Katherine sat on the bank, watching beetles explore the mud. Sawyer and Carson would wade across the sandy bottom, looking for minnows or interesting rocks in the clear water. Our conversation would flow like the water around us, quiet exchanges, unhurried, refreshing.

In time, we would finally climb up out of the woods and make our way to the little path, down the few steps we’d carved into the hill to our backyard. Then that life would begin, a different slice of the day.

These moments did not cause monuments to be built. Bridges will not be named after our time in the creek. Schools will not commemorate the day with little one-act plays. Holidays will not be set to celebrate the adventure of five people walking a couple of miles to get ice cream.

None of this in any way diminishes the history that warrants study, the significant moments in time that so many people are affected by. But it will serve as a reminder that all of history, all of the stories, are woven with this one, or ones like it.

Our stories overlap and become part of one another’s telling. I ride across a desert and one day I tell the story to four children, who one day tell the story to a friend of a walk in the woods where they sat with their feet in the water. Each of us are changed by the living and the telling. And on and on and on. Until history is made.

Hope this finds you remembering,

David

Copyright © 2023 David Smith