Kids learn by playing. By playing as children, we learn skills and practice adult roles. The more imaginative the play, the better we prepare for an imaginative and creative life.
My brother and I spent a number of years repeatedly devising and playing versions of a game that required use of the entire second floor of our house. Army men and equipment, spacemen, cowboys and Indians -- even, during certain decadent stages, marbles -- were personnel in our game. My brother loved military life and warfare; I loved politics and diplomacy. We joined our interests in a complex and ever-evolving game that kept us fascinated until we were embarrassingly far into our teens.
While in England's Lake District this past month, I learned of a book about kids who were at least equally imaginative, but who operated on a far vaster scale than the second floor of a house. The book was Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons (1930), which, as I now discover, was but the first of a twelve book series involving the same group of children.* The story takes place on an idyllic lake in the Lakes (inspired by a combination of Lake Windermere and Coniston Water), where the Walkers spend their summer holidays.
The four Walker children -- John, Susan, Titty, and Roger -- are a cohesive group of siblings who spend every free moment alone together. Roger, the youngest, is seven years old. The others' ages aren't given, but I'd guess that John, the oldest is twelve to fourteen. They are imaginative in the extreme, and fanatically knowledgeable about sailing (their father is a naval officer serving in the Far East). The book begins with Roger, trying to run home as quickly as possible, finding it necessary to tack back and forth against the wind while running up the lawn.
The mother is wonderfully tolerant of her children's independence, and wonderfully whimsical by nature. As the kids invent words in "native" languages, she willingly uses those words in her conversations with them. The kids have been lobbying for permission to spend the last week or so of their holiday on an uninhabited island in the middle of the lake. Their mother requires her husband's consent. He responds -- himself obviously no stranger to whimsy -- with a telegram: "Better Drowned than Duffers. If not Duffers Won't Drown." This telegram is accepted as a somewhat cryptic consent.
The plot is simple. Kids sail alone to the island in a family boat, the "Swallow,"and set up camp. They meet and engage in mock warfare with a couple of equally creative girls who call themselves the Amazons. They have some simple adventures, a wonderful week, and leave with a parental promise that they will return the following summer.
The children reinterpret every observation in terms of their imaginary game -- they are explorers, the two girls are pirates, all other people on and around the lake are untrustworthy and possibly dangerous "natives." The small island itself has been discovered only now by themselves. Their mother -- sometimes Queen Elizabeth, sometimes"the female native" -- makes occasional visits in another boat to bring extra food and convince herself that her brood is still alive; she is welcomed as a benevolent member of a foreign tribe.
These are the kind of kids who, even before the story begins, have named a prominent hill near their house from which the lake can be viewed "Darien" -- because it was from Darien in Panama that Balboa first spotted the Pacific Ocean.
What's unique about the book is the kids' intricate knowledge of sailing, and the author's willingness to describe every action, every move, the young sailors take while sailing -- as well as the details of setting up camp, and of their wildlife observations while camping and exploring. Much of this knowledge was taught to them by their father, much also is self-taught, inspired by their idolization and emulation of the distant Naval officer. The author trusts us to be equally conversant.
"These little boats often do without stays at all. Is there a cleat under the thwart where the mast is stepped?"
"Two," said John, feeling. The mast fitted in a hole in the forward thwart, the seat near the bows of the boat. It had a square foot, which rested in a slot cut to fit it in the kelson.
What's also unique is the author's confidence that his young readers will avidly follow all the nautical details that he offers them. I certainly was impressed. Call me ignorant, but I never knew that rowing a sailboat from the stern was called "sculling" -- a necessary maneuver with sails down in tight places or when the wind was still. To the Walker kids, knowing how and when to scull was like my own knowing how, as a child, to patch a flat tire on a bike.
Children in any period are imaginative and creative. In today's world, I suspect that most of this creativity is devoted to digital games. There's something to be said, however, for a world where the same imagination and creativity are expressed in ways that bring children into the outdoors, teaching them to sail a boat under all weather conditions, to set up camp, to survive a storm, to cook over a fire, to explore rough terrain. All without the constant supervision and guidance of adults, and all before the teen years really begin.
As the mother remarked good-naturedly at one point:
We are going home at the end of the week. It would be a pity if two or three of you were to get drowned first.
Ransome may have idealized the Walker children, but Swallows and Amazons was written for kids who could easily imagine themselves in the Walkers' position if they only had a lake, a boat, and a little training at their disposal. I'm not sure how a child would react to the book today. Perhaps he'd be bored.
Not all changes in our world have been "Progress."
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