Playgrounds: Find a River, Any River
The two posts on this page, Playgrounds and Vagabond, are dedicated to the lost art of Play — roaming into unchartered, unscheduled, unhinged places and spaces without a map, an agenda, a deadline, a purpose, a meaning. Places and Spaces of being not doing … of wandering into wonder.
Playgrounds is photo essay of physical roaming places – mountains, oceans, rivers playgrounds with swings and slides, dawn, twilight, the other side of the world, your own backyard … to name just a few.
Vagabond is a mediation on the spiritual roaming spaces – adventure, spontaneity, creativity, paradox, courage, humour, imagining, forgiving, blessing …
My hope is that you will contribute to this page with photos and stories of your Playgrounds.
I begin with a bow to the River where I am always cajoled into play.
Almost 20 years ago, I walked through “the dark woods” of my life to find a river. As is often the case with consolation, the river was right in my own backyard—just about a mile down the road from my home in a funky Hudson River town 35 miles north of New York City.
The River became the choreographer of my inner movements — dancing with the wonderings and wanderings of my spirit and surprising me with unexpected leaps into the holy. Many rivers later, from the Hudson to the Delaware to the Rhine to the Danube to the San Diego River, she continues to be my constant companion— the muse who murmurs sweet assurance in her insistence on doing only what she was created to do. The river was made to flow. In her surrender to do that one thing, and that one thing only, she releases me from the complexities of performance into the simplicity of being … into the breathing space of playing with all the possibilities of being fully alive.
Find a river, any river … the one that flows nearby you, the one that flows within you … and roam the generosity of your longings.
