Imagination can turn trees into spaceships (11/13/06)

Where have all the climbing trees gone? It has been years since I have seen a child in a tree. Most trees in people's yards have had their lower limbs amputated to facilitate mowing. Besides if branches were accessible then strangers' children could climb too high and fall and then there would be a lawsuit. No, we have to protect children from themselves (and us from the lawyers) by keeping our young in the house playing video games or in some structured play group, properly supervised by a qualified adult.

I used to spend many afternoons "flying to Jupiter" on a downed tree in the pasture. I don't know what the fascination was with Jupiter but I rarely "visited" any other planets. The broken limbs were the controls and the tree canopy held the "power supply" which was really nothing more than a colony of wild rabbits. I often coerced my mother into going along on my interplanetary travels. She wasn't very good at firing the "guns" to fend off "enemies" but I enjoyed her company anyway. Sometimes our dog, Lassie, would get bored and chase the "power supply" but the treetop was dense enough that she rarely caught any of the bunnies.

A huge sycamore by the creek was the "horsey tree." It had a branch that dipped low and given enough bounce could deliver a skinny child up into the sky - or at least several feet off the ground. The last time I visited the farm that branch had long since broken off and the tree itself was in danger of dying.

But just when I think imagination has gone the way of that tree I get a phone call that restores my belief in the power of pretend. It seems that baby Emma now picks up the television remote control and "talks" as if talking on the telephone. A young co-worker says her little girl, Lilly, used to do the same thing. Of course, Emma is unintelligible at this point but she has fun imitating her mama and that is what it is all about.

Children learn through play and I'm not sure all these scheduled activities we have for our children are a good thing. Kids need down time. They need time to be bored. They need time to find a fallen tree and turn it into a space ship.

I am not the only one who used fallen trees for adventure. Several lifetimes ago, I was spending the night at a friend's house. Her little sister took me out to the field to her "car." You guessed it, it was nothing more than a maple that had once soared towards the sky and now gave a little girl somewhere to hide from her bigger sister. She was a little embarrassed about the tree until I told her I had a spaceship of my own at my house. We traveled in her "car" for several hours. I wonder where she is now?

I wonder what fond memories our children will have of their youth? I can't imagine being nostalgic about video games and jam-packed schedules. Maybe they will remember a special gymnastics teacher or the first time they became a club president. Just like I can't relate to the stories my grandmother used to tell about stealing ice from the ice house in the summer time, or walking behind the horses breaking clods up with her bare feet, I wonder if baby Emma will be able to relate to my stories of turning trees into horses and spaceships.

Somewhere along the way I seem to have lost the ability to change inanimate objects into other inanimate objects. I would much rather take a nice long nap than go to Jupiter. Rabbits no longer provide a power supply, instead they dine in my garden. Sycamores are messy not regal. Dead trees are a hazard, not playthings.

But as long as babies continue to improvise and use remote controls for cell phones there is hope that imagination is not dead. It has merely gone dormant in those my age and blossoms in little girls and boys. The children of today will find their own magic to transform the ordinary objects around them into something that can take them to the stars and back while I sit here and remember what it was like to fly to Jupiter a long time ago.[[In-content Ad]]