Hood River, and two different thoughts on childhood.

A) “It's never too late to have a happy childhood.”

― Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker

B) “Summer will end soon enough, and childhood as well.”

― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

But why does childhood have to end? Some things have fixed points, like equinoxes and solstices and birth dates that make you legal to do certain things and state that one part of your life is over and another begins.

That’s the concrete and fixed reality of childhood, which ends when a date on the calendar says it ends, and then there’s the abstract feeling, the concept of childhood, that is open for all. But it takes the courage to be curious and the willpower to tune out what other non-children are doing or not doing, and hack a path that takes you to places like…rivers to step into and search for creatures, rocks, fossils, and other wonders. The ability to do so is there, once you are there. Why do we so often stay on the sidelines the older we get?

I want to be around people who are actively part of path-hacking and trailblazing and finding small moments to build big memories. That’s why hanging out with children is so important: they don’t think about those things, generally. They just do them.

Time to go jump in the river.

We did not go out to eat a great deal when I was a child. When we did, it was a treat.

For some of the same overlapping socioeconomic reasons now, we do not go out to eat a great deal. But even if the particular question of money was eliminated as a catalyst for where we eat or don’t eat…I would still like the act of going out for food to be, for our children, something that is…a treat. Not a given. Something special, out of the ordinary, something meaningful to differentiate one day from another day.

El Rio Burrito Bar was a small treat to end a great treat of a day.