My playground

I was rich as a child. I had a playground that was a canyon, a whole canyon.  Growing up in the 50's when cowboy and indian and westerns were a way of life what better yard then a canyon.

We all had forts in the canyon. All most everyone for 5 miles was boys and then there was my friend I'll call Peggy were the girls. We hid everything from the boys and they spent their time trying to make us miserable.

Peggy and I named everything in that canyon, each tree had a name, each rock formation, each small cave. We could say "meet me at Rabbit Hill" and no one knew where that was except the two of us.  When I go walk there today I still remember some of the spots like Rabbit Hill, Lone Pine, Hole in the Wall, Bobcat Rock. This made it easy to hide from the boys.

Hole in the wall was the best hide out. We could go in there and not be seen and could set and watch the boys look for us everywhere. It was some rocks that we had taken sagebrush and put where there weren't any rocks. We would move a piece of sagebrush and go in and pull it back and we were hide. What fun we had, sometimes they would come so close we could hear what they were saying.

I think this naming of things made me see life a little different then a lot of people because I still name things and places and my grandson thought it was so much fun he came down and we went out and named places on horseback just like the good old days and enjoyed that no one else knew where we were talking about, I named cactus on my trip down here to Arizona. But I see each cactus different because he has to have a name. I notice the color, shape etc.  This is a good habit to be in if you paint or take photographs because you notice things that people fly right past.