*Listen to the Audio & Watch the Illustration*

I got lost.

I mean, not so lost that I’d never make it back to civilization before I starved to death. Just lost enough that I could pretend I didn’t live in suburbia in 2020 for a few hours.

Renaissance, I thought to myself. Knights and lords and ladies. A simpler time where your enemies were known and you knew exactly how to deal with them; with a sword to be precise. These woods could be the King’s Forest – protected for the King’s pleasure. Perhaps I was a servant gathering deadwood for winter. Or maybe I was a woodsman, tasked with keeping trespassers out. Maybe I was tracking down a poacher!

Liking that idea, I knelt and examined the ground. Normally, if there were people around I would just casually look. But there was no one to see me – ‘lost’ as I was. Which was the point. A right-brainer like myself needs to jump start the creativity now and again and this little “create your own adventure” ad I saw in the classifieds on the local news site sounded like fun. So far, it had been.

We met at the park, were given some packs and then ushered onto a bus for a two hour drive to the closest National Park. On the way there we had opened our packs to discover some water, granola bars, paper, crayons (crayons? seriously? who puts crayons in an adult’s pack?), a pocket knife, a flashlight, and some rope. Upon arrival at a Park Ranger station we were given a few hiker safety instructions then told to simply wander and go have an adventure. This was an exercise meant to help jumpstart our creativity. Continue reading →