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

[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.