Outdoor adventure brought more joy than toys

Topeka Capital-Journal, The, Dec 25, 2003 by Capital-Journal

Growing up on my family's hilly 10 acres of land in southern Jefferson County, creativity was the key to entertainment for my younger brother and I.

We could only travel as far as our feet, usually bare, wanted to walk down gravel roads. Once or twice, we walked all the way to Perry.

Because of all our time alone or in the company of each other or friends who lived about a mile down the road, we thought of ourselves as explorers --- brave adventurers.

In the summers, we lashed pliable sumac stalks together, thatched the dome and even plastered it with the mud and grass mixture we saw demonstrated on public television programs about Africa. We left the cow dung out of the mixture because we didn't need the plaster to last. In the winter, it was too cold to sleep in our forts, so we turned to sledding and hiking.

On Christmas Day, most of my classmates at Perry Elementary School were in for a day of present-opening and church-going. My family, not native to the county and too weird for my classmates' comfort anyway, had a different schedule.

Just like other kids, my brother and I woke up at 5:30 a.m. and waited breathlessly in my dark bedroom, clinging to each other and trying to smother our giggles. When we could smell coffee and hear groggy whispering in the living room, we moved into panic mode of excitement. By the time mom knocked on the door and let us out, we were almost sick with anticipation.

The frenzied excitement of opening presents --- my brother ripped through presents --- ended all too soon. Exhausted, wearing all our new clothes and buried under our new toys, we'd collapse next to the couch.

Even the year my dad bought me a plastic pink convertible car for my blond Barbie, who suffered from 1980s mall bangs and metallic garments, I felt the letdown.

Unlike other kids, we followed up present opening with an afternoon feast of Indian food and then a Christmas hike. Other kids thought the Indian food was a lot scarier than the hike, but it all contributed to my otherness. As I explained frequently back then, we are vegetarian --- not veterinarians --- and we're talking about the Asian subcontinent of India here.

Unlike present opening, the Christmas hike was something everyone on the family agreed on --- it rejuvenated us and wasn't followed up by any holiday letdown. I didn't care that nobody else's family went hiking on Christmas.

As an adult, I've traveled through the green highlands of Guatemala, rafted down white water rivers through lush jungles in Costa Rica and gazed out over the cold Pacific Ocean from the rocky cliffs in Oregon. But I think I was as ecstatic to follow my dad's trail-blazing through other peoples' cattle pastures and piney- smelling woods as I've been in any foreign place.

The year "Santa" brought us a set of black-and-orange walkie- talkies, we had a particularly adventurous hike. We bundled up and set off south down our hill. Still within sight among the Osage orange trees and not far from mom, my brother called me.

"Erin, look, there's buffalo ahead. Please respond. Over," the walkie-talkie crackled.

"Roger that, Skyler, I see 'um."

We probably said something like that. We pretended all hay bales, but especially the round ones, were buffalo in those days. And my brother knew to warn me of real cows --- my greatest fear.

That year, I climbed over the barbed wire fences labeled with "No Trespassing" signs with a lot less apprehension as I tried to keep up with my dad's long strides. My brother was up ahead in the open field calling back to me on the walkie-talkie that no cows were in sight.

We signalled to each other and crept low to the ground as we approached the ruins of a long-gone farmhouse's storm cellar. Rusty plow blades sticking up from the ground were telltale signs of ancient, forgotten civilizations.

After reaching the water tower above US-24 highway near Perry, my family's traditional destination, we returned through a wide pasture we'd never crossed before. My brother and I stopped in our tracks, fear tingling up and down our spines, when we came across the decaying corpse of a cow.

What happened to it? Oh, the adventure.

What a great idea, the hike. Our parents wanted to give us what other kids had but didn't like the lesson so many kids garner from a holiday focused on spending lots of money on stuff. And kids forget stuff really quickly. So they topped the day off with something that meant a lot to everybody: nature and togetherness.

It goes down in my book as one of the best holiday parenting ideas.

Because while the Christmas sunset took a back seat to television football games in other kids' houses, we were trudging home with our makeshift walking sticks, breathing in the crisp air and stopping to stare at the orange fireball sunset, hoping to make it home before it disappeared.

Erin Adamson, editor of Northern Life and a reporter at The Capital-Journal, grew up in Jefferson County and now lives in Lawrence. She can be reached at (785) 295-1186 or by e-mail at erin.adamson@cjonline.com