Adventures

I just finished up a week of training staff for the Adventure Playground down at the Marina. It is a pretty amazing place, and one of the last of its kind in the U.S. Basically, it is a place where kids get to do whatever they want. They also have lots of tools, paint, wood, nails, and random donated STUFF at their disposal - stuff like old boats, old cabinets, sail cloth, plasic tubing, carpet, windows...The kids (and staff) construct their own spaces and places out of all this stuff. They also get to ride a long zip line, climb a tire wall, play in a big net, and, again, do pretty much whatever they want, as long as it is not harmful to themselves or others.

I don't know about you, but I was blessed with a childood that included a father and a sizeable work bench in the garage. I was given free reign over the hammers, saws, boards, and nails. I think Dad stocked scrap wood especially for myself and my siblings to play with. We build rif-raf funiture for our hideout in the forsythia hedge, as well as treehouses, skateboard ramps, and makeshift rabbit hutches. I painted and re-painted my iron bed frame, side tables, and dressers. I usually measured once and cut badly, but I learned how to hold a hammer and pull lightly on a saw blade.

This is not the experience of most children, whose furniture comes pre-assembled and pre-painted, who have no garages with work benches. Just as there is much talk of a nature-deficit, there is also a practical-skill-deficit surfacing among modern youth. Kids don't know how to masure, much less cut. They do not have yards and spaces of their own. If they do have backyards, they are filled with pre-assembled plastic Little Tike play toys, not hand-made tire swings and treehouses. Kids aren't often given permission to build, create, and make believe much anymore, except on their computers. The Adventure Playground is an amazing place, made moreso by the fact that it is supported and allowed in an era of insane liability issues and "not in my backyard"  attitudes to such conceptual playgrounds (lots of slapstick wood forts seem to bring down property values.) Maybe we can all get one going in OUR diminishing backyards.