Late in the summer I asked Eliot to show me around where he and his friends had been spending their days all summer. As I worked in our basement office Eliot would stop in and ask for permission to go places or do things with friends and frequently that request was to go to “the creek”. We live in a very suburban area. There is both an elementary and Junior high within easy walking distance of our neighborhood and between those two schools there is strip of timber surrounding a shallow creek that will make you feel like you are in the middle of nowhere just feet away from the busy street that runs North through town. We rode our bikes and once we passed the Elementary and a small bridge that topped the creek I followed Eliot as he took a sharp left into the trees on a small worn path that many bicycles had obvious traveled over the warm months. Once we arrived at a bit of a clearing right against the creek bed we jumped off of our bikes and Eliot showed me the fish traps that the kids had made out of disposible water bottles. So far the homemade traps hadn’t brought much success but luckily one of the boy’s had the real deal to denote to the cause. I asked Eliot what they did when they got a fish in their trap. He told me that they would identify what they had caught and then release the fish back to their watery home. We walked in the water a bit and Eliot told me that fiurther down the creek the would find some crayfish and frogs too.

We backtracked out of the water and left our bikes while we walked a bit further through the timber and he showed me the fort that the kids had put together as well. The fort consisted of a combination of reclaimed materials likely pilfered from each child’s garage, and the brush and sticks that they picked up off the ground nearby. Eliot was so proud of the work that he and his friends had done to pass time during the long warm summer days and I have to say – I was even more proud. I was reminded of this tour of the outdoors last week when Cory, Leila and I visited a college campus and the presentation included a picture of students in the biology department taking water samples from a local waterway. If only all of the joys of childhood could continue through college!