Posted on 11-27-2009 under Adventures

Today my boys and I spent about 3 hours on a mountain of dirt. There’s a construction site near our house where a new subdivision has been built over the past year and a half. At the entrance to the subdivision, there is the big mountain of dirt that seems to come with all new subdivisions. Behind the mountain of dirt, is the place where they wash off all of the cement mixers. It’s an amazing place. The cement mixer washing area is sort of like walking on the moon– or at least that’s what we pretend. There are small hills of concrete surrounded by smooth surfaces that look like wet flows of concrete. Once when we walked there, it was actually wet and Isaac and I wrote our names in the surface to claim the space as our own. The past two trips to the site, we have focused our attentions on the big mountain of dirt. Climbing it, attacking it, throwing dirt clods at it or down it. There is a big puddle close to the base and it’s fun to see if you can get throw a clod far enough to land in it.

Today when we arrived, the boys went to the top of one section and I sat off at a distance on another part. It felt like the kind of place where I should be invisible and they should get to do anything they want, imagine anything they want without me being there to interfere. I was bummed because I had forgotten my camera on this excursion. So instead of taking pictures, I watched and listened. I absorbed the experience and tried to understand it at its core… so that when I did have a camera with me next time, I might be able to tell the story in one frame.

As luck would have it, it was a warm day today and we were getting hot and the boys wished they had brought along their shovel. We agreed to walk back home, get camera, water, shovel and change into short sleeves and drive back. What followed was 2 full hours of dirt digging, throwing, attacking, imagination fun. They worked hard. I did my best to capture it.

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