Creeks, Railroads, and Other Esoterica

 The gang, 9 y.o. Daize, 8 y.o. Towser, and 5 y.o. Tawnse all poured back into the house dancing and smiling, squeaking and pouncing on one another. They'd been out for twenty minutes running around a new outdoor location with their dog. 

We've been locked down fairly hard the last few weeks as the count of Covid cases has risen in our little town. When we have ventured out and about, it's been to the same places over and over again. The places were fun. The kids invented games that went along with the space... running in and out of shallow test mines, six feet deep with gently sloping entrances. 

Those were different sorts of experiences though. The gang were inventing new 'routines', (their word not mine; maybe they picked up the phrasing from their buddies in organized, performative sports?). They were shooting to make their routines snazzy—they’d finish up by hopping, in sequence, onto one of the land bridges between the test mines, the two larger kids framing the smaller one between. They were looking to make their routines repeatable as well—working on them over and over until they got them just so. Even with the repetition, there was fluidity in their quest for perfection, each new run-through of a routine brought its own little innovations. Sometimes the innovations were so large as to warrant a new routine of their own. All the routines had names. There was the M, and the double M for example. Each of the kids had memorized the basics. I do know where they picked up that big of process: they'd started learning named sequences of movement in Parks & Rec classes in the before times. As usual in their most involved play, they didn’t need me. I was told I could head for the house more than once. Since we’d hiked to that location, I actually could return home to wait for them to turn back up.

Yesterday, though? It was a completely different sort of joy. The joy of discovery. They ran, literally ran with their dog to checkout each new thing. We'd stopped on a plain confined in a shallow valley with a creek running through the middle of it. The main feature of importance to the gang was an abandoned railway. The rails—used in another time to carry cows out of the region—cruised along next to the creek, crossing it in one spot vis a small, yet still very functional, trestle bridge. 

It was all so much fun to see! I’m used to watching them run through the streets of big cities, checking out construction sites and new store windows. This was the same, it’s just they were surrounded by autumn grass half as tall as they were, rust colored old rails, and a bending, burbling stream.