Dreaming awake: Journeying to the forest

I realize that not everyone may agree with me, but my home state, Iowa, is a truly beautiful place. Miles of rolling hills and gentle prairies. Acres of farmland with verdant crops: alfalfa, corn, and soybeans. Jagged bluffs and winding rivers. Friendly small towns and welcoming cities. Peace and quiet in the evening with colorful, watercolor-like sunsets. Many are in the understanding that Iowa is simply a flat state, and that may be mostly true. Yet where I live, in the heart of the northeasternmost county, the landscape is anything but flat. As a child, I was spoiled even further to have access to a place with such adventurous scenery in my very backyard. In our pasture-turned-forest, existing no more than a walk across Bethany’s campus away from our house, was this land that captivated my childhood imagination and became a place where some of my greatest memories were formed. I wish that I could have spent much more time wandering through the waist-high grass and splashing my feet in the chilling waters of the source of the creek that flowed amid a canopy of trees. Perhaps, the best memory was spent alone with my brother on the afternoon of a sunny Mother’s Day. You could say, it was like living in one’s dream. It was as if we had the day to dream awake with our eyes open.

It was May, so the weather was beautiful and the natural world was flourishing. Wildflowers were sprouting and the entire world was painted with a deep hue of green against a bright blue sky with clouds that wisped about it like cotton candy. My Dad decided to take my Mom out for a road trip and to eat on the way with my younger siblings getting the coveted position to fill the seats of the family car. Even back then we were a large family, which has since grown to include 11 children of which I am the second oldest, and we were not able to all legally squeeze into the same vehicle. Being less than 16 meant that neither I nor my one-year and eleven-day younger brother would be able to drive along separately. So, as the oldest of many young children, we were automatically at a disadvantage in getting to tag along. Yet, with the adventure our parents permitted us to make, my siblings, personally, got the short end of the stick. Our parents, and quite possibly to keep us from idly sitting in the house with numerous temptations to rummage in places we weren’t supposed to, permitted us to make the trip back to our forest to adventure and have fun at our newly built treehouse.

Once our parents had left, we knew that we needed something to munch on as a snack. We understood that, as all adventurers, we would inevitably work up an appetite from our explorations. So, we got to work on putting together a snack. My first thought was to go for the tortilla chips. Back then, it was one of my favorite things to snack on, and still, to this day I get a craving for the Tostitos brand of tortilla chips. While they may not be the healthiest thing on planet Earth, they satisfied my hunger and were undoubtedly far more delicious than my school friends’ beloved potato chips. Yet, we couldn’t help but experiment with something new. So when we spotted a box of graham crackers and a jar of peanut butter, we just couldn’t help ourselves. To our surprise, the combination was exceptionally good and these became known as our homemade “nutter butters” where we would spread peanut butter between two graham crackers. My brother perhaps had healthier ideas and decided to put bananas in the mix. I maybe wasn’t the healthiest in my choices, but what can I say, food that’s unhealthy is good and it’s not like I have ever struggled with being unhealthy. From a young child’s perspective, there are times to be healthy and there are times to be unhealthy.

With this, we packed water, I packed a notebook and pencil in case I wanted to doodle or write something and put it in a bright blue backpack. This backpack, as far as I know, we still have to this day which has been on many more adventures since. We brought along the phone we were allowed for in case of an emergency, put on our shoes, and began our walk to the back of the farm. To describe the journey, we fortunately had a path to follow. With our house surrounded by our largest farm, some waterways link the area near our shed to our forest area near the back of the farm. We knew these trails well from going on numerous adventures ever since we were very little children in some sort of ATV. There was no way that we were going to get lost. So with this, we hurried along, running through the soft grass on our way to the place of our adventures.

The first place we went to was a no-brainer. We definitely made the trek down to the spring. Shaded by a diverse variety of trees, yet with a few places where the sun would break through. It was an amazing place to go. We sat on a rock beside this slight pool that had formed near where the trails that we had made went down a somewhat steep hill. To remember how we would take our socks off and go walking in the water at the source, we sat there and dipped our feet in the cool water. This was a bit chilly being quite cold as it freshly circulated from underground. However, it reminded us of the source, and since a recent rainstorm had changed how the spring looked, we wanted to see how it looked after it shoved large amounts of rock and dirt around. When we reached the source it was mostly the same, but the area did seem a lot flatter than we remembered, quite possibly from much of the loose surface rock being washed downstream.

The next place to go on our adventure was the treehouse that we just built. Little known to us, this would be one of the last times we would spend in the treehouse as the tree it was built in was taken down by a heavy storm later. The ruins remain today. We spent a lot of time there, relaxing from all of our journeying, and decided to break out our snacks and drink some water. After spending a bit more time in the tree house and exploring the area nearby, our feet became tired and we were in desperate need of a bit healthier and more sustaining meal than just a snack of our “nutter butters” and tortilla chips. With this, we decided that it was late enough in the afternoon that we should head back to the house. We picked up our stuff and headed past the spring toward home. On the way back, we became a bit curious about some large raspberry bushes that we saw toward the top of the cliff on the east side of the origin of the spring. We normally picked these as a refreshing treat when they were ripe. To our disappointment, they were out of our reach and it was too dangerous to attempt to get at them. Instead, we proceeded back to home. As an additional deterrent, since we were off-trail in the tall, prairie-like grass, we had a short encounter with some sort of snake that darted across a rock where we were walking. We hastened our pace with the somewhat irrational fear of being bitten by the snake. Yet I can say that being bitten did not sound fun.

When we got back to the house, we were tired after having a fun afternoon. We heated up some soup for a more filling lunch and took a break. After all, walking all morning can wear a little child out, a lot. When our parents got back with the rest of our siblings, we were sure to have recounted our experiences with them. While the rest of my family may not remember this, these are memories that I will forever cherish and never forget. Our journey to the forest was certainly as if we were dreaming awake, with our eyes wide open, surrounded by the beauty of God’s wonderful creation.