bug city

[asakiyume]

Yesterday morning I saw a construction across the asphalt path that runs through the common area in our neighborhood. It was a long stick, and leaning on the stick were smaller sticks and twigs, bits of lichen-covered bark, and moss. It looked as if ambitious small-scale beavers had decided the path was a flow of water and were attempting to dam it.

Later in the day I was passing by again, and three little kids, two boys and a girl, were happily at work on it. It was, they told me, a bug city, complete with bridges, roads, parks, districts--everything.




This morning Wakanomori and I found it expanded, so I took a video:

Watch on YouTube

They were all so wholly engaged with the work, excited and happy, feeding off each other's ideas.

What White Horses, Nazca lines, pyramids, citadels, or hanging gardens did you get up to creating in childhood? Or now, for that matter?

Comments

[mrissa]

I assume everyone had leaf cities in autumn, but also one family reunion we had an entire complicated underwater city of stone in the creek, and my big cousin G dropped a boulder on his foot trying to dam off part of the flow around it. This is the most important thing I remember about our family reunions: one time G dropped a boulder on his foot and his toe swelled up SO BIG but it wasn't broken okay it wasn't broken.

There was some wood involved in the underwater city, some leaves, but mostly stone, it stayed put better.

[asakiyume]

it wasn't broken okay it wasn't broken --ahahaha, I can hear this being said; I absolutely can.

And I can just imagine all those stone houses and roads in the creek, and how cold it must have been to be wading in it.

[mrissa]

It was deliciously, numbingly cold; it was July for the reunion, and the cold of the creek was a relief.

[sartorias]

When I was small, my dad used to take us to the beach so he could work on his tan. We were not allowed to touch the water, as he meant to lie there until he'd toasted, not have to watch us. So my sibs ran around, and I build elaborate cities in wet sand, complete with tunnels and little cottages, and steps going up and down hills. Wet sand was wonderful for sticking together! I also used to write words to watch them swept away.

[asakiyume]

cities in the sand are fabulous--the bigger they are, the more wonderful.

Do you remember what words you wrote to be erased?

[sartorias]

The words were mostly names of my story characters. I felt very daring, having them right out in the world (because of course the world would be FASCINATED yet there was the possibility of being in trouble) so it was satisfying to make them--then to see them swept away into secrecy again. (Eh, I was seven or eight--he'd stopped taking us by the time I was ten.

[asakiyume]

I think that's marvelous. Just think of the waves carrying those names out into the ocean. Mer creatures meeting Sartorias-deles! (If you were already imagining that world at that young age?)

[sartorias]

I was indeed. Started at age eight, with Clair and the gang or girl adventurers.

[cmcmck]

Being a collier's grandaughter, I used to build mini tunnels under the earth and prop them up with twigs.

[asakiyume]

Very nice! Were there cave-ins, and did you mount rescues?

[cmcmck]

There were and of course I did! :o)

[asakiyume]

Hurray! The brave miners have all been saved!

[heleninwales]

We used to build sandcastles at the seaside. I don't remember playing with twigs and sticks because we didn't really have a garden. When the weather was fine though, we used to take our little plastic people and animals outside to have adventures. But mostly we made up stories about them indoors.

[asakiyume]

Did you ever take the plastic people and animals to the seaside?

[heleninwales]

I don't remember every doing that. Partly because we were limited by how much luggage we could take. When I was a child we didn't have a car, so went on public transport when we went on holiday. Also I would have been afraid of losing one of them. They all had names -- well the people and horses and dogs did. I hadn't named all the cows, sheep and pigs or the zoo animals. :-)

[asakiyume]

I sense the hierarchy ;-)

We had realistic plastic horses as kids that we loved, and we did have a garden, so we would take them out and have adventures for them in the garden. But I remember also playing those sorts of games in the house--under chairs, on the rug, etc.

[minoanmiss]

Oh that is adorable! I used to make clothes and kitchenwares for my dolls. and stage raids: they were divided into two tribes who would raid each other for goods and captives. ahem.

[asakiyume]

Hahaha--my sister and I had kingdoms on top of our dressers, and mainly the relationship between the inhabitants of the two kingdoms was peaceful BUT SOMETIMES THERE WERE CONFLICTS.

[mallorys_camera]

The Magic City! Or Knight's Castle! 😀

Have you read them? E. Nesbit & Edward Eager, two of my favorite children's book authors.

[asakiyume]

I loved Knight's Castle! That's how I learned about the story Ivanhoe!

I've read lots of E. Nesbit, but I don't think I read The Magic City.

[gingicat]

That's so cool!

I still like to photograph accidental fairy hollows in lawns or fields.

[asakiyume]

NICE. I like taking photos of the fairy kerchiefs you can find in the grass in summer.

[light_of_summer]

During childhood, my favorite small building materials were Dominoes. We didn't really have enough of them for me to make extensive structures, but I definitely remember making enclosures, kind of like imaginary courtyards. I think I sometimes put my lavender-haired troll inside them, but the building was the fun part—I didn't do much playing with dolls.

At the beach, I think my favorite thing to build with damp sand was a sort of bridge/tunnel—I would dig a hole about 5 inches deep and significantly longer than one of my feet. Then I'd stretch out one of my feet in the hole and cover that foot's ankle with sand, up to the level of the sand surrounding the hole. Then, the challenge was to geeeennnnntly extract that foot, leaving the sand bridge arched over the tunnel underneath.

Another thing I remember was that I once took a piece of hard local clay that had been thrown up by street excavations (or possibly by landscaping—I forget), and gradually ground it into a shallow (and very thick-walled) little bowl shape, by rubbing it against rough cement edges or outcroppings that had been left exposed by the excavations. I was proud of making it, but I incautiously left it unprotected, and a neighbor kid broke it.

On a larger scale, my brother and I both enjoyed building indoor blanket forts by draping a big extra bedspread (I think it was a bedspread) over dining room chairs.

I actually did some crocheting and embroidery and "spool knitting" and sewing as a kid, too, but those experiences felt really different from playing with sand or dirt or Dominoes or chairs and bedspreads.

[light_of_summer]

Oh! Also, my elementary school had extensive playfields. When the janitor mowed them, we would create imaginary rooms by heaping the cut grass into lines that were kind of similar in size and shape to old-style, clunky speed-bumps.

[asakiyume]

And then did you play house in them, or was the making of them the fun part?

[light_of_summer]

I don't really remember?

[asakiyume]

Fair enough ^_^

[light_of_summer]

Probably not House, I'm thinking. Possibly magical beings, or a secret organization, or a group of horses or other animals...😏

[asakiyume]

Much more satisfying!

[asakiyume]

The bigger the blanket fort, the better! Yeah, we had fun making those using couch cushions and blankets.

That's so cool about the clay and the bowl. I've always wanted to find "wild" clay but so far I haven't (... I haven't exerted myself too hard, it has to be said, but when I happen to look, I don't see any).

What percent of the time were you able to extract your foot without the top of the tunnel collapsing?

[light_of_summer]

As far as I can remember, if the sand was good and damp, and if I was careful, the bridge might hold up enough for me to get my foot out maybe two times out of three?

But the more the sand dried out, the more likely collapse was. I think if I left even a successful bridge for long enough to dry out, it would collapse unattended.

I wonder if the surface tension of the water was what made it hold together...

[asakiyume]

That's definitely a high enough success rate to want to keep trying, and a high enough failure rate that success isn't guaranteed, making each success a triumph.

[yamamanama]

I thought it looked like a sort of offering.

[asakiyume]

It does look like that too. And what's great is that none of the other people walking along the path have disturbed it (yet).

[sovay]

Later in the day I was passing by again, and three little kids, two boys and a girl, were happily at work on it. It was, they told me, a bug city, complete with bridges, roads, parks, districts--everything.

I love the bug city!

I painted pictographs on the slates of our front walk and wild stones.

[asakiyume]

When you were making the pictograms, what ancient examples were you drawing on, do you recall? And do you remember if you had in mind that yours were going be conveying a message?

(I'm thinking of the Serranía de Chiribiquete art in Colombia--photo and article link.)

[sovay]

When you were making the pictograms, what ancient examples were you drawing on, do you recall? And do you remember if you had in mind that yours were going be conveying a message?

I was obsessed with Native rock art of the American Southwest, especially the petroglyphs which I often tried to reproduce in paint. I finally got to see some of it in person when I was thirteen.

[asakiyume]

I finally got to see some of it in person when I was thirteen. --that must have been wonderful

[sovay]

--that must have been wonderful

It was! It was part of the second trip to see my brother's godparents in Colorado, after which we tooled around technically the Four Corners but mostly New Mexico and Arizona. They were incredibly beautiful and full of time to me.

[wayfaringwordhack]

What wonderful imaginations they have! I love it. When I was little and lived in arid West Texas, there were little gullies created by the flash floods over the caliche plains. My siblings, friends, and I would dig connecting tunnels in the gully faces for millipedes, which we lovingly relocated to our complexes, and had high hopes that a few horny toads would find abode there, too. I also have memories of building forts with old corrugated tin sheets, wooden pallets, and those giant cable spools. Sprout just sat down with me while I was reading this entry and told me about a recent playdate at a wild area near home here in Lebanon when another kid told her that a certain boy her age was "too mature" now to build forts. To which, Sprout told me, "I don't think he is going to have very much fun as an adult if he thinks he is too 'mature' for fun and fort-building." :P

[asakiyume]

100 percent agree with Sprout--she is so right!

I'm thinking of those giant cable spools now! There's a place near here where I sometimes walk where there are BUNCHES of those all stacked up, and I'm always thinking how great they'd be for picnic tables--put a shade umbrella in the middle of them and you're good to go! And I can *completely* picture your forts (both the tiny ones for centipedes and the big ones out pallets, cable spools, and corrugated metal). When I was growing up there was an area where lots of large piping had been abandoned--not so large or sturdy that you imagine it for sewers, but for example, what you'd use to channel a creek under a road--and we used to like to crawl through those and imagine those as hideaways or tunnels to places.

PS--I didn't know "caliche," so I looked it up, and am once again wowed by how diverse the biomes are on good old planet Earth.