So… I don’t know how many of you out there watch modern cartoons. Even if you have kids, you might not watch what they watch beyond the casual first look to see if you think it is okay for your kids. For those that do watch, you might have noticed that modern cartoons are – all over the place. From the rather tame Disney cartoons to the really wild and different ones like The Amazing World of Gumball – there certainly is a range of experiences and styles that didn’t really exist back in the day. Sometimes it is excellent, other times… it isn’t.

I do actually like to watch cartoons with my son. One cartoon that caught my eye is Craig of the Creek. As Wikipedia puts it:

“In the fictional suburban Baltimore/DC area town of Herkleton, Maryland, a boy named Craig Williams and his two friends, Kelsey Pokoly and John Paul “J.P.” Mercer, have their many adventures in the titular creek, described as a kid utopia of untamed wilderness in which tribes of children reign over tree forts and dirt bike ramps.”

But – its a lot more than that. These “tribes” take on all kinds of personalities – from fantasy to futuristic to animalistic to you name it. Kids play different roles, like a trading post owner, a horse, a map maker, a knight, and so on. Kids can live out whatever role they want – and all of the kids are in on the role play.

The show makes clear that this is all role play – in one episode one of the children calls a creek-wide game of “the ground (floor) is lava” and you see several kids immediately “dying” in the lava… but several quick cuts always show that they are safe on the ground and just pretending.

I don’t know who all works on this show, but it’s like they put some many 80s kids’ dream life into cartoon form. So many of us dreamed of living near a creek or other nature area that we could play fantasy games in. I was lucky enough to move next to one in elementary school. We just called it “The Field.” Several of us would romp around that creek area talking about plans to build forts, secret hideouts, and an entire society just like they created in Craig of the Creek. What ultimately thwarted those plans was that we lived in a rural area, and there weren’t enough kids to make our ideas a reality.

But that didn’t stop us from dragging all kinds of wood and junk back there to start forts, island hideouts, and other areas. Where I live, there are certain weeds that grow up straight to at least 7-8 feet tall, forming pretty stiff, staff like husks when they die. They aren’t bamboo, but kind of a close version. They were an endless source of swords, staffs, walking sticks, and magic wands. If we found a patch that grew up around a tree – that soon became a protective maze around our new tree house hideaway.

And yes, there was an actual creek there – it served as our “main route,” our way to find what we needed in the field. We knew where the cliffs, islands, big trees, large ditches, and so on were all along that creek.

There were also weird things that happened back there, too. Once we walked through a wide ditch/almost ravine to go find a swimming hole we liked. On the way back a few minutes later (the water looked too low – meaning there was a higher chance snakes would be in there), we found a brand new arrow lodged in a tree root where we had walked. It was a modern arrow with a large, sharp, metal arrow head. It look a while to pull it out. Why was this not there before? Who would shoot such a nice arrow and then leave it behind? Had it been aimed at us?

Another time, my brother and I were coming over a ridge in a small area with thin-trunked trees that were densely packed. When we got over the hill and to the edge of the woods, we heard a loud “CRACK!” I saw a tree fall over and the shadow of something running away. We thought it was a cow (there were occasionally cows back there to graze) and I yelled “RUN!” We ran away as fast as we could. A week later we decided to see what happened, so we got as many friends as we could and went to investigate. We found the felled tree. Except… it wasn’t chopped at the base. Someone had stacked several 3 foot long sticks in a circular cone shape around the base, and the tree was broken about 5-6 feet above the ground and had been left leaning over – still barely attached at the break.

The more I thought about it – the more I came to believe that the shadow-y running figure was more like a man standing up. How could a cow break over a tree 5-6 feet up? But then again – who could a human do that as well? The lighting was still good in this forest – so why was he so dark? Was it the way he dressed? Was it a Bigfoot-like creature covered in dark fur? We never found out.

Anyways – one month when I was barely in high school, we got a massive amount of rain. The valley that contain The Field turned into a lake (or more accurately, the lake that was at the end of the creek to the Southeast of our house backed up to way Northwest of our house), and everything was submerged for weeks… maybe even months. Features were washed away, trees and plants died, etc. It was pretty much wiped clean. The farmer that owned the land took advantage of that and started using it more for cattle grazing (I think), and we became teenagers and moved on to other things. But it provided us with years of entertainment – and seeing Craig of the Creek reminds me of many of the dreams we had for that area. Some of which were literal – I had several real dreams at night of how we could build up the area – some were more urban, some were of a San Antonio Riverwalk-like experience, others were more like Craig of the Creek.

Above: My brother, Dad, and me in a buttercup-filled opening in The Field in 1983.
The line of trees behind us is where the creek was.
To the right of the picture is where the mysterious forest of Bigfoot started.
The left side of the picture was the way to The Swimming Hole and Arrow Ravine.
The trees on the right side of the photo are obscuring The Cliff – a cut in the creek that created
a 15-foot cliff, the top of which was a favorite destination because it gave you
great views of The Field. Plus there was a tree there with massive thorns (12″+) we liked to collect.