doodlebugs,barefeet and creation

Most of my childhood was lived outdoors. There were no televisions or computers for entertainment and our mothers could only stand us inside if we were helping clean. "Go outside and play" was the standard response to our question "What can I do?" I lived in the deep south where the weather co-operated with being outside most of the year.
We lived at the end of a little dirt road in an old farmhouse. During school, my sister and I would walk to the paved road to catch the bus. I learned to read the tracks left in the sandy road... snake slithers, bird tracks, racoon paws, dog prints, possum paws with tail dragging impressions. When we came home in the afternoon, I would check to see what had changed... who had driven in... a tractor... a truck.
The house we rented was on a farm owned by Mr. Coody who lived down by the paved road. We were surrounded by pastures, barns and sheds, dirt roads, cows, occasional horses and once, pigs. They didn’t last long, though... too smart and too smelly. My sister and I were free to roam the outdoors and we did.
The pasture next to the house had a gully at the very end, far from the house. It was one of my favorite hiding places... warm sun... soft breezes... a good place to read uninterrupted by parent’s demands. The chinaberry tree in the side yard had a fork in the main trunk that cradled my small body perfectly. That was a wonderful place to hide... covered with the lacy foliage and purple blossoms... not to forget the hard little berries that made perfect ammunition for a pea shooter.
Some of my chores were outdoors... feeding and watering the hens, gathering the eggs, picking up walnuts and pecans in season, picking beans in the garden... but mostly, the outdoors was my great escape... my learning lab for fantasy and real life. I wept when I found the dead kitten, killed by some unknown predator... rode my pretend horse wildly around the pretend wild west of my yard... dug for doodlebugs in their little cone shaped homes in the sand... took my shoes off as soon as school ended and lived with gloriously free feet for the summer (except for the occasional painful sandspur)... caught grasshoppers and created little homes for them in jars, providing grass and water, watching them grow and split out of their old skins... ran from rattlesnakes...dressed our patient old cat Goldie in doll clothes and rolled him around the yard as my baby... had mud pie tea parties with pokeberry tea... learned how to suck honeysuckle blossoms and the end of grass blades for a sweet taste...made wigs of long hair from the abundant Spanish Moss hanging from every tree...sat on the front porch and listened to the grown-ups talk, tell stories and laugh as they escaped the heat in those days before central air conditioning.
Almost all of our lives now, are like central air conditioning and heat... indoors, the same temperature all summer and winter long, confined to the known four walls that surround us in our homes and work and transportation. Short walks over pavement to and from home and work and shopping... children who do not have the freedom these days to roam safely nor the space... various and sundry diversions that keep us all indoors observing life through someone else’s eyes.
Michael walks the farm each morning. He checks the cows, gets the paper, sees the first blue bird come back for spring, watches the dogs play, feeds the ducks, hears the screech of Gary the hawk flying overhead. I feed the cows and barn cats each day, see the morning sunrise in a different way each day, hear different birds sing each day, count the ducks on the pond each day. I can report there are no doodlebugs in the North Carolina mountain land on which I live but there is the splendor of creation all around me.
In the 104th Psalm, there is a beautifully lyrical description of God and the creation of our world full of leviathans and mountains and angels and darkness and beasts and gratitude... "Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created: and thou renewest the face of the earth... I will sing praise to my God while I have my being... Bless thou the Lord, my soul". Perhaps today I will look for the sight of the Holy One as I feed the cows...give thanks for the winter wind that cuts to the bone... see if the possum visited the leaning barn to eat leftover cat food... search for the doodlebug treasures left by my Creator in the world that surrounds me.