I've always liked hiding spaces. After we outgrow peek-a-boo, what kid doesn't enjoy hide and seek? There's the choice about where to hide. The suspense of finding. The anticipation of being found. And above all, we get found. Someone actually cares enough to find us.
Unless they don't. And that's a lesson too.
I don't recall anyone looking for me here. I didn't want to be found. (Well, maybe a little bit.) And who knows? Maybe someone was looking from a window or from the front yard? But I needed the solitude. The culvert afforded that. Plus it exhilarated me. Hiding inside the culvert when someone drove over thrilled me. And once, during Spring, I worked at both ends to unplug this culvert and get the water flowing. Water and the way it moves has always fascinated me. This culvert taught me perseverance. And self-reliance. And loneliness, much of it self-imposed. I think we introverts alternately crave that, even wallow in it and then suddenly we are yet again surprised by how fantastic other people can be. But then we forget again. Or get scared. Or ache to be alone. To think. To plan. To problem-solve. To make the water flow.
"Water is taught by thirst." ~Emily Dickinson
5 comments:
You would totally have found me hiding in one of those too as a kid. Probably still might. I like Solitude. For all the reasons you mentioned.
I had a favourite culvert as a kid too! It was located down Cemetery Road. Creepy eh? But to my friend and I, the little flow of water through the culvert and the puddle it created was our "Lake of Shining Waters" when we were playing "Anne of Green Gables."
Our neighbor had one of those cattle crossing under the road culverts. I always loved the road noise, going on above us when we were in there.
We didn't have a culvert, but we had a a little stream in the woods in back of our house and that was my wonderland. A lot of hideouts got constructed on that brook. Everyone knows you gotta have a water source near your hideout:-)
I loved culverts! I too, often found myself hiding in them, or up in trees, or in the structures in the playground of the school across the street from my house after school hours. I appreciate this post so much. You truly nailed the description of introverts. This I can relate to so very well.
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