NATURE! - GROWING UP IN NATURE

Nature!  Another topic that I jumped the gun on last week.  I should have explained my connection and desire to write about nature and the environment before posting on this subject!  Grant it, my "Massive Pepper Harvest" was not a whole lot of info, so I'm taking advantage of this only being week 2 of following my blog schedule and doing a little backtracking.

I have always loved nature and being outside!  (I totally wish that I had a picture of myself as a child playing outside, but those are at my parents' house still...)  My siblings and I and our neighborhood friends would play outside ALL THE TIME!  Or at least it seemed like it!  I remember massive snow forts, playing in the sandbox for hours, swinging as high as we could to go over the "swing set shadow" and then jumping off, making habitats in an old plastic baby pool for the crayfish and toads that we would find, going on bike rides way farther away from home than we probably should have gone, exploring trails and abandoned trains, spending so much time at my best friend's house and in their pool that I called her parents "mom and dad" and my baby brother (who I took everywhere) called her dad "Uncle Daddy!" (hilarious in my opinion!), collecting wildflower bouquets for mom, playing flashlight tag in the connecting backyards with the neighbor kids, climbing trees and getting dangerously high, riding dirt bikes without helmets, jumping in huge piles of leaves, yelling across the backyards to make plans with my friends, and so much more!


Every summer my family would vacation for two weeks in The Great North Woods!  This was very special for us because my maternal grandfather began vacationing in the same area, on the same chain of lakes when he was a young child. He continued the tradition with his children and my mom and dad continued the tradition with my siblings.  Now my husband and I are taking our children up there!  While vacationing up there, we would go on walks through the woods, long bike rides and long boat rides.  We would go out driving around at night "hunting"/looking for deer, make campfires with s'mores and try to find constellations in the clear dark sky.  We would count shooting stars and even experienced the Northern Lights!  We'd swim and play on the beach, waterski, tube and enjoy time together as a family.  I even remember my brother would try to get as close as possible to the little chipmunks and try to take their pictures!
 
In highschool I kept myself busy in sports.  Fall - volleyball, Winter - basketball, and Spring - softball.  I met so many great friends.  I'll never forget them and some I still know well today!  I was able to take two different biology courses in high school and two or three Drafting classes! At least one was before it was technically Computer Aided Drafting (CAD).  That ages me!  It was through my CAD class Junior year that I found out about Ball State University's High School Summer Program for the College of Architecture and Planning.  (It has since evolved over the years into the DesignWorks Summer Academy.)  My friend and I went to Ball State for two weeks between our Junior year and Senior year of High School.  It was awesome!  We learned so much about Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning and met so many great people and professors that we both knew we needed get into the College of Architecture and Planning after graduation from high school.  We applied super early in our Senior year of high school and both got in!!!

More about how I matured in nature next week.

What were your favorite things to do in nature when you were younger?