I love hiding games. Sardines, Marmot Tag, Predator/Prey, Hide and Seek, Manhunt, Kick the Can. Each of these games involves a player closing their eyes and counting to whatever, while the rest of the players run for the hills to bushes, trees, ditches, and overgrown spaces. They climb, scurry, lay flat, curl up, and duck for cover in whatever cozy nook presents itself. And then they wait.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
The good stuff happens in the waiting. When you are nose to the ground with the soil, or head in the air with the leaves, you are in it! Lady bugs, spider webs, mosses, galls, sandy soil, damp springs, mushrooms, centipedes. In those moments of waiting and hiding, when a ladybug crawls ever so slowly along a leaf, or an inch worm heaves and levels methodically down a stem, or the texture of the moss sooths your curious finger, or a triangular-shaped rock becomes an arrowhead dropped in this very place a thousand years ago, there is time to watch. There is time to see life on a smaller scale and a slower pace, time to feel textures, even if they are annoying poky ones that are a bit uncomfortable, time to drop in for a brief moment to know a place better than anybody else in the world because everybody else walks right past it, but you, you stopped, ducked in, and took time to be in it!
Tick. Tick. Tick.
If you are really lucky you just might hide yourself in the same place that a butterfly hid itself before spinning a shiny little chrysolis which dangles from a leaf just overhead. In that case, you are both waiting together. Waiting for the right time to burst out of your shell and to set sail, friends hot on your tracks, escaping their chase in a full zig-zagging sprint. And whether you escape or get caught, as long as you don’t skid out on blacktop or cement, it is all laughter in the end.
So what do you think, is it more fun to watch a good hiding game, or to play a good hiding game? Not as an excuse to duck out and close your eyes or to check your phone, but to get in on the waiting, on the seeing, on the discovery. Dive in, wake up the senses, try on an ant’s perspective, feel the anticipation, and then burst out on the scene. Remember now, you don’t have to run at a full sprint. You may be a kid at heart, but you’re not built like them. Let them tag you and it is still all laughter in the end.
My 50+ year-old self isn’t as fast as my 40+ year-old self, but man, oh man, I still love a good hiding game.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
If you are really lucky you just might hide yourself in the same place that a butterfly hid itself before spinning a shiny little chrysolis which dangles from a leaf just overhead. In that case, you are both waiting together. Waiting for the right time to burst out of your shell and to set sail, friends hot on your tracks, escaping their chase in a full zig-zagging sprint. And whether you escape or get caught, as long as you don’t skid out on blacktop or cement, it is all laughter in the end.
So what do you think, is it more fun to watch a good hiding game, or to play a good hiding game? Not as an excuse to duck out and close your eyes or to check your phone, but to get in on the waiting, on the seeing, on the discovery. Dive in, wake up the senses, try on an ant’s perspective, feel the anticipation, and then burst out on the scene. Remember now, you don’t have to run at a full sprint. You may be a kid at heart, but you’re not built like them. Let them tag you and it is still all laughter in the end.
My 50+ year-old self isn’t as fast as my 40+ year-old self, but man, oh man, I still love a good hiding game.
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