(no subject)

[ritaxis]

1. Climb a tree.

2. Roll down a really big hill At UC Berkeley on a lawn that I think doesn't exist anymore.

3. Camp out in the wild

4. Build a den

5. Skim a stone   -- you do mean skip a stone, don't you?

6. Run around in the rain

7. Fly a kite

8. Catch a fish with a net

9. Eat an apple straight from a tree

10. Play conkers -No, but we made candles out of sky lupines, and dolls out of flowers,

11. Throw some snow -- I think so. I don't remember for sure, but my experiences with snow before my 12th birthday wer few until we went to Philadelphia, where we arrived with mostly worn-out California clothes in the coldest winter in many years. I was eleven,

12. Hunt for treasure on the beach

13. Make a mud pie

14. Dam a stream

15. Go sledging -  what is this?  We made sleds and raced them on dry grass hills.

16. Bury someone in the sand

17. Set up a snail race - We made snail hotels instead

18. Balance on a fallen tree - Or, perhaps, climb all over it and pretend it is a spaceship?

19. Swing on a rope swing

20. Make a mud slide -- but we made dry grass slides all the time

21. Eat blackberries growing in the wild -- well, wildly growing on the roadside, anyway

22. Take a look inside a tree and make a little house in it

23. Visit an island -- Brooks Island in the middle of the San Francisco Bay, where my father was a worker on an archaeological dig.

24. Feel like you’re flying in the wind

25. Make a grass trumpet -- does this mean a grass harmonica?

26. Hunt for fossils and bones

27. Watch the sun wake up

28. Climb a huge hill

29. Get behind a waterfall -- how about float down a river instead?

30. Feed a bird from your hand

31. Hunt for bugs

32. Find some frogspawn

33. Catch a butterfly in a net

34. Track wild animals -- I had a kit to track wild animals but I mostly did dogs and one or two raccoons

35. Discover what’s in a pond

36. Call an owl

37. Check out the crazy creatures in a rock pool

38. Bring up a butterfly

39. - Catch a crab

40. Go on a nature walk at night

41. Plant it, grow it, eat it

42. Go wild swimming

43. Go rafting. on inflatable rafts, on a calm river. Okay?

44. Light a fire without matches -- it was a feeble little fire.  But I made pretty good chert and obsidian tools.

45. Find your way with a map and compass  -- and I made maps too, showing rocks my best friend and I were finding in the wild part of neighborhood.

46. Try bouldering (rock climbing outdoors but with safety mats and short drops) -No safety mats, though, just my adult cousin Lynn.

47. Cook on a campfire

48. Try abseiling -What the hell is this?

49. Find a geocache (use GPS and other navigational aides to locate hidden containers.) -  I couldn't because there was no GPS.

50. Canoe down a river -- I rafted in a river and canoed in a lake.  Good enough?

This is by way of personheadmadwriter and ultimately from the National Trust which I assume is in England.

Given the fact that so many of the things are directly related to the English countryside and wilderness, I am surprised that I was able to say I did so many.

Comments

Translation notes

[ellarien]

Sledging would be what you call sledding, I think. My first experience of it was with a large tin tea-tray, but afterwards we got a proper sled/sledge with runners. I rather went off that after my father persuaded me to to go down head-first and I ran into a tree -- no serious damage, but enough of a mess to take some explaining at school! These days they're mostly plastic, and last winter I saw them being used on slopes that were much more mud than snow.

Abseiling is that thing where you go down the side of a building or cliff with a rope and pulley. Rappelling? No, I haven't tried it.

Not sure about the grass trumpet, but probably. We certainly used to do the thing where you whistle over a flat blade of grass between your thumbs. (And usually chew the little knobby joint of the grass stem, too.)

[redbird]

I wonder how small an island has to be for them to count it. I've lived on islands most of my life—but Long Island and Manhattan aren't exactly small, except maybe in comparison to Great Britain.

[anghara.livejournal.com]

Not very outdoorsy, here, apparently. I can swear that I did only about fifteen or sixteen of those, myself.

Re: Translation notes

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

It's quite novel to see an American having to adapt to a British list when normally it's the other way round!

I assume a grass trumpet is where you put a blade of grass between your hands and blow and make a sound like a kazoo. As children, due to a shortage of suitable grass where we lived, we used privet leaves.