Oliver: Here’s to the childlike wonder of a summer full of spontaneous adventures

Am I the only one who can’t believe that summer is already here? Unofficially, of course.

Still, I kept waiting for our official spring to start, because it seemed to show up early, then disappear before it ever took hold. All my preparatory yardwork failed to happen. Maybe that’s why when I finally got my flowers planted, I had to beat back what appeared to be jungle that had sprung up overnight.

Whatever the case, here we are. And the race is now on to pack as much fun as we can during the short amount of time that we have. Before long, we’ll be planning for winter again. Ugh.

Since I’ll be spending a good part of the summer running back and forth to radiation treatments for my breast cancer, I’m going to have to be strategic in what Team Oliver does for fun.

When I was growing up in McHenry during the 1970s and ‘80s, summers would stretch out endlessly before me. The possibilities for fun were limited only by imagination.

Sure, there always were chores to do. My mother, a workaholic by all accounts, made sure of that. Still, if my younger brother and I were diligent about getting our tasks completed, we’d have most of the days to amuse ourselves.

I was reminded of the simplicity of those summers recently when I saw a young girl stopping by the big bur oak tree in front of our house. She had to be 8 or 9 years old, and she seemed to study the ground around that tree. It didn’t take long to figure out that she had spotted all the cicadas that had emerged.

Our neighborhood is filled with the sound of cicada songs. This little girl, bless her, took it upon herself to carefully pick up a cicada and then place it gently on the tree trunk. Then she’d stoop over and get another one to place on the tree. No doubt she was trying to help them.

She did this for a while until someone called to her. And then off she scampered. No doubt farther down the sidewalk she would find another tree with even more cicadas to help.

That’s just the sort of thing I would have done at that age. I remember vividly finding the exoskeletons of cicadas on our trees. I still think cicadas are pretty cool.

It never took much to amuse me during those long summer days.

My brother and I used to love to climb the trees that lined our driveway. We each had a favorite. Because Joe’s favorite tree had a branch that looked like the wing of a biplane, he’d refer to it as the Red Baron. Mine was the next tree over, so we called it the Sopwith Camel. Of course, that meant that we would have imaginary duels from our arboreal perches.

When we weren’t doing that, we’d often go exploring around our couple of acres, as well as those of our uncle who lived next door. We thought we hit the jackpot when we found a bunch of wild raspberry bushes. Never mind that we’d usually get covered in mosquito bites for our efforts, but the berries were so good that we didn’t really care.

Every now and then, we’d hop on our bikes and attempt to ride around the block. This wasn’t an ordinary block. No, it really was a bit of a feat since we weren’t on 10-speed bikes and the “block” was about 5 miles. We had to be pretty committed to try that.

The start of the ride always made it seem like it was going to be a piece of cake. One small hill and then it was cruising past a cattle farm. Of course, we’d have to stop and talk to the cattle or at the very least wave hello. They’d be staring at us as we passed anyway.

The ride became harder as we made our way to the farthest point away from home. Inevitably, we’d start to get tired and thirsty and question why on earth we ever wanted to do this. I suppose it didn’t help that the wind was always in our faces during the final leg. Somehow, we always managed to make it home. No doubt we also slept extremely well afterward, too.

None of these adventures were planned months in advance. Heck, most of them weren’t planned at all. Summers were fun and spontaneous.

Perhaps in the absence of having been able to make real plans, I’ll have to tap into that childlike wonder of flying by the seat of my pants.

I think I’ll start by “helping” a cicada or two.

• Joan Oliver is the former Northwest Herald assistant news editor. She has been associated with the Northwest Herald since 1990. She can be reached at jolivercolumn@gmail.com.