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.

[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.

[cmcmck]

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

[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.

[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.

[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.

[gingicat]

That's so cool!

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

[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.

[yamamanama]

I thought it looked like a sort of offering.

[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.

[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