One year at the Sundance Film Festival Chris saw the documentary Ski Bums which was so memorable that he later shared with Melissa. From that movie we learned the term “ground score”, which was used to describe all of the valuable things that are found under chairlifts at ski resorts after the snow melts. The term applies equally well to bicycling. Chris has been finding stuff for years and now Everett has joined in: cell phones, keys, tools, garden implements, workbenches, ladders, etc. In the past week we have found a new baseball, four baseball gloves and a pair of biking gloves. One of the downsides to riding the Bakfiets is that we have room to carry all of this stuff, and therefore we have one less excuse not to pick it up.

On a potentially related subject, we have noted in the past that in Everett’s view the world is filled with treasures that are waiting to be collected. One recent morning during our ride to school we stopped a couple times so that he could put handfuls of rocks, gravel and dirt into the cup holder on his trail-a-bike. Another example: as we started clearing the lawn a few weeks ago, tears were shed because we were putting too many sticks in the yard waste recycling bin. Our neighbor Dennis attempted to help the situation by showing Everett his giant pile of sticks, providing assurance that we are unlikely to run out, at least in the next few months.

During the Y-Tribe camping trip a few weeks ago Everett and Chris hiked the boardwalk across the marsh. Along the way we discovered cattails and experimented with different ways of releasing spores. At the end of the boardwalk we climbed a hill and threw rocks for a while. We found a fallen tree that was decomposing in a curious way into roughly prismatic chunks of wood (and we took some samples home to show Mom).

In that same area we found a 20 foot rope tied to two trees, which we freed and which Everett took everywhere with him for the rest of the weekend.

For the most part this worked out fine except for the 10 minutes that Chris left Everett alone and he came back with rope burns on his neck from riding down the tube run (in his defense, Chris didn’t know this is what Everett was planning, or that the Dads at the tube would let him take the rope along with him (assuming any Dads were present)).

The other Dads watched Everett walking around camp with his rope, sticks and rocks. One of them joked “Don’t you buy him any toys?”, and Chris replied that many people had but he was more interested in outside treasures.