From an old Land's End kids' catalog:

"With all of your wild one's tree climbing, wrestling, and even simple walks to school that somehow get sidetracked, durable shorts and pants are as much of a necessity as a trusty compass."

This was in the boys' section. It made me ask, "why aren't there any girls on this page?"

When I was a kid, and still, really, I was in the dirt, rooting through the woods, cruising my bike toward some new adventure, right along with the neighborhood boys (and usually, frankly, without them). Tree-fort building, hiking, creek swimming; I was all over that stuff. In fact, I was the one who would instigate the famous creek-damming trips to Point Wells every summer.

The whole neighborhood would get together: Erika, John and I, Mark and Marty, maybe David, and we'd pack our stuff and head down. Packed items usually included towels, chips and bean dip, sodas, and my dad's Korean-War entrenching tool. Those days were excellent.

We'd always pick up some clay rocks (baby shale, you know) from Woodway Creek, also known as Ukakamakaia Drainage, a silly name my brother and dad used. Clay rock was (is) good for face painting, sculpture, and smearing on your comrades.

The main focus of these days at Point Wells was to dam up one of the two creeks that flowed down the beach. We usually picked the south one, because it flowed over sand - the north one was lower-lying and the sand near it was quite rocky.

Using the entrenching tools and well-placed rocks and pieces of driftwood, we'd create a pool about three feet deep and six feet across. Custom wading pool, courtesy of the C Street Engineering Corps.

The point of all this is that the girls in my family were just as ready as the boys to get dirty, muck about, go on adventures, be Huck Finn.