The gloomy stretch between fall and winter can feel like the dreariest time to be outside.
The glittery magic of snowfall hasn’t arrived yet. The beautiful autumn leaves have fallen and faded to rust and brown. Bare trees stand against grey skies, and the beige grasses and ferns in the woods don’t exactly invite discovery.
My grandson and I were standing at the window looking out at it all.
It looked chilly out there and the temptation to curl up with a blanket and a movie was calling. It’s what we both felt like. I didn’t know what we would do if we went outside. I didn’t have any inspiring ideas, so I simply said, “Let’s go out and find something”.
Out we went, bundled up against the chill. We moved slowly, walking across the lawn toward the wooded section of the backyard. The sky was grey; the ground was brown. It felt ominous, and wizard-like. That’s what I said to him. And my simple statement, “It feels like a wizard would like this day”, turned our walk into a few hours of discovery. Here’s what happened.
A moment later he bent down and picked up a gnarled branch that had blown from a tree.
“This kinda looks like a wizard stick, doesn’t it, Gma?”
It did indeed, I told him. And I wondered aloud what a wizard would be doing on such a day. His imagination took over from there, and we were suddenly protecting the backyard from invading monsters. I’d point to a tree and exclaim, “I think I see one!” He would form his best wizard’s stance and wave the stick, sometimes charging in that direction in pursuit. We hid behind bushes while listening to the footsteps of monsters going by.
My job was simple, follow his lead and react to his vivid imagination with gasps and wide-eyed wonder. It became a game that had no planning, no instructions, and no rules.
And as I let it unfold, I remembered that feeling of childhood wonder. I recalled how real our outdoor playtime felt, how involved we became in our roles. How vividly we created scenes and worlds of our imagination. Do you remember playing astronauts, cowboys, witches, knights and superheroes with nothing but what we could find, or sneak out of the house– buckets for hats, aprons for capes, spatulas and wooden spoon weapons, cardboard spaceships and kingdoms, tree-forts?
I became as involved as my grandson in backyard monster protection that day. I was drawn into the world of straw-headed trolls emerging from the ground. And as we laid under a log to hide, the looming silhouette of a huge fungi absolutely made me feel like we had better stay still and quiet to avoid detection.
The more I followed his lead, the more his imagination soared. We sat and rested on patches of dried ground and discussed the dangers and battles we had just experienced. I would say things like, “It’s a good thing you noticed the trolls! I thought they were just humps of grass.” (which they were). But that opened the conversation up to how he knew it was more than just a lump of grass. And how tricky trolls can be.
The wizard stick came back to the house with us and now rests beside the step, ready for the next time the backyard needs a valiant hero.
Maybe in the spring, when those tow-headed trolls turn green in disguise.
That afternoon my grandson discovered a wizard stick — and the adventures hiding in his own backyard.
And I rediscovered something too: how easily imagination can turn an ordinary day into magic.