Travelling the Royal Road

Travelling the Royal Road

Recently I went for a walk with my five year old son. Sam. The day was warm and I wanted to take a long walk. Sam doesn't like walks for the sake of just walking. Some time ago I caught on to the fact that if I occasionally incorporate a game of pretend into our walks, the walk becomes more fun for Sam, and consequentially, I get to walk further. In fact, he now looks forward to a good walk if I call it a journey, or a quest.
So, on this unusually warm March day we walked. A while ago, Sam saw a movie called The Neverending Story. It's about a boy named Bastian, who upon discovering and reading an old book about a land called Fantasia, finds himself literally drawn into the story. He meets up with a young warrior named Atreyu and together they try to save Fantasia from "The Nothing." Sam has been Atreyu on and off for some time now.
"On this walk let's play Neverending Story, Mom. Let's travel the Royal Road together to Fantasia," he said. Sam became Atreyu, and I assumed the role of Bastian. We needed horses for this journey and his, of course, was named Artak, the beautiful white horse from the movie.
Bastian doesn't have a horse in the movie but Sam wanted me to have one so that I could keep up with him. He named my horse Firebreeze. As he galloped along with orange shoelaces tied around his forehead (he's been wearing them for days now), he shouted out orders, warnings, and his intentions to save all of Fantasia from evil. As young children do, he wove themes from other stories into his Fantasia theme. This day I picked up hints of Sleeping Beauty, and The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. Sticks became magic wands, and the melting snow became magic potions. He gathered handfuls of snow and sprinkled it about the ground proclaiming that all the evil beings would now grow hearts, and love would come into the land. As we walked past puddles, he would dramatically splash the water every which way, adding wonderful sound effects of his own.
I galloped a bit here and there and held two small magic sticks of my own. I would interject a sentence here or there, too; enough to keep my end of the story line going. Eventually I grew tired of the game and just wanted to walk. In fact, we had walked at least a mile by now. I felt myself growing slightly irritable with Sam's insistence that I keep playing.
"Mom. Come on! Remember? We're travelling the Royal Road!" Many times he plays these games by himself when we walk, but today he wanted me to keep playing. I insisted that he could play it alone for a while and I would just walk. He clearly wasn't happy about it but carried on the game without me, reminding me to tell him when I was done being alone.
As I walked, it suddenly hit me...Black Pony.
I vividly recalled a time when I was about nine years old, and my brother, two cousins, and I played a game called Black Pony. We all had imaginary horses and would gallop about on our different adventures or journeys each day. This theme went on for some time. We had our own private paradise to play it in. We lived on a private road in the country with acres of woods, a pond, and delicious, pungent swamps below.
I invented the game of Black Pony and my horse always got to be named Black Pony. Always. I insisted. I had a vision of how the story line should go each time we played, and assumed that the others would agree. There were arguments and negotiations, but it seemed understood that this particular game was my baby.
I envisioned my horse as sleek, shiny, and black as night. I rode with no saddle, but clung to Black Pony's thick, course mane. I remember that my hair was cropped short, so the ties from my sweatshirt hood became my braids. I took great pleasure in seeing and feeling my "braids" fly back in the wind as I galloped about on Black Pony. But most important, I had my brother and two cousins to partake in these imaginative games. We built forts, forded streams, climbed trees, and swung on vines. We had special landmarks in our woods: Big Rock, Little Rock, Pig's Crossing, King's Throne Tree, and Jumping Pine, to name a few. We had our own Neverending Story back then.
I have such powerful feelings and emotions for that time in my life, all shaped by the combination of the woods, the pond, my brother and two cousins, and the time to explore, play, and imagine. I believe that the closeness we shared, along with the freedom we had, was a powerful gift in my life. If I could give my children the gift of those woods and that pond with its splendid swamps, I would. I live far away from there now. But I can bring my own childhood sense of wonder to them. I can also give them the gift of time and space of their own in which to imagine.
I was jolted out of my reveries by the pleading little voice of my five year old. "Please, Mom. Can you play now?"
I jumped back on my horse, called Firebreeze these days, and together we galloped down the Royal Road.