By Timothy Deal
August 5, 2016
Last year, shortly after both grandparents on my father’s side had passed away, I started a short series of blogs I call “Lessons Learned at Grandma’s House.” Today I pick that series up again with a lesson well-suited to this time of year. (In yet another case of “great minds think alike,” expect some overlap with Nick’s latest blog.)
- Adventures abound outdoors, especially when you take your imagination with you.
I talked about indoor activities in previous entries of this series, but one of the charms of going to Grandma’s house was exploring her expansive property. Purchased as a hobby farm way back before anyone was moving to that obscure corner of Noble County, the area around Grandma’s house included a barn, a couple garages, sheds, chicken houses, Grandma’s aviary (more on that in a future blog), a field perfect for kickball, woods, a creek, and one of the best sledding hills in northern Indiana.
Not Tim’s Grandma’s House
You know those idyllic posts people make reminiscing about running around outside as kids unsupervised? Yeah, that’s what we got to do at Grandma’s house. The scattered buildings, trees, and hills made a perfect playground for hide-and-seek or, more often (as instigated by us boys), war games. This is where we stayed undercover, sneaking from barn to garage to shed and back, spying on our siblings and cousins, trying to figure out where the other team hid their flag. Usually one team got charge of the jail – an abandoned pigeon coop – which was a great place to lock up opponents after you had chased them down and captured them. To this day, I still attribute my ability to walk quietly behind people and surprise them to these games.
The area beyond the backyards where the creek and woods lay weren’t explored as often, but it was always a fun challenge when we did. For a long time, the ditch leading down to the creek was so overgrown with underbrush, it was hard to get safely to it. But once we did, then the trick was to find the right kind of rocks to throw in to create a stepping stone path across. Granted, even if you made it across, you typically had to deal with more underbrush on the other side. One summer, my dad and I attempted to blaze a trail in the woods from Grandma’s house to my cousins’ house a country block away. We succeeded that year, and though I don’t think the trail lasted long afterwards, it was a fun experiment.
Summers spent at Grandma’s house and at my own country home are key to why I still love Indiana today. Some local people like to poke fun at Indiana’s perceived flatness (they should visit Kansas sometime), but I’ve always found calm in looking out over a field of waving grassland. There’s a certain humbleness in the subtle nooks and cranies of gentle farmland that towering mountains can rarely provide.
But of course, that’s an adult’s perspective. The child in me still enjoys looking for things outdoors that inspire a greater sense of adventure. I may not play pretend outdoors like I used to (though I hear there’s a new socially-accepted outlet for that in a certain app about pocket monsters…) but a long walk outdoors will usually get my imagination firing for future story ideas. Long walks down a local wooded path were certainly key in my brainstorming for New Wells Rising. The time spent outdoors can help you feel connected to the bigger world at large, remind you that there’s energy and life beyond the walls of your home, and hopefully restore awe at the beauty of God’s creation. I can’t think of a better catalyst for imagination than that.
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