Through the pages of her journal, InHabit Travel Studies Consultant Jennifer Wieland has been taking us along on her travels. This month, we’re pleased to share an eighth excerpt from Jen’s travel journal. She writes from Michigan, where she is spending time with her stepmother and a childhood friend. She discovers the power of mindful and creative play-making. She describes how her friend created a company and a home that exudes play in all its facets. You can find all of Jen’s excerpts here, including those that follow her Camino trek from Le-Puy-en-Velay to St-Jean-Pied-de-Port.

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“When we reframe ‘childlike’ as celebratory, we discover an unadulterated connection to play and joy…. What takes shape rises from intuition, an interest in chance, play and even a bit of chaos. When our magic - our unshakable creative capacity - is embraced, especially through community and play, the results are a shared experience far greater than the sum of its constituent parts.”  - Hervé Tullet, “Art of Play: Images and Inspirations from a Life of Radical Creativity 

A Michigan road trip 

It’s summer, my season of play. My stepmother and I are taking a road trip across Michigan on Highway 94 to visit my childhood friend Katie. Now, there are many different kinds of playgrounds in the USA — the highway often feels like one of them. As soon as we’re down the onramp;  cars and trucks speed along playing tag,  darting in and out of lanes. As we weave our way out to the western part of the state, I tell my stepmother a story about me and my friend... 

Building sandcastles

It’s 1973. I am on my way to play with Katie at her summer home on Nantucket Island. We are inseparable during the school year so there is no question we will play together during the summer. My parents lovingly organise an amazing adventure for me and off I go over the ocean from Boston. It’s the first time for me to fly in an airplane. The trip across the bay is a roller coaster ride - as the rain pelts down and the wind batters the small twelve seater, I’m not scared at all. I live next to a beachside amusement park and the topsy turvy ride is my favourite. Swinging and rocking back and forth, I cackle as I bounce my way to the island. Skipping off the plane, I am incredibly excited to have a whole week with my dearest and most creative friend. 

We are in our own world, we are in the flow; the outside world floats away as we start to dig.

The next day, the sky is a cerulean blue as we head down to the town beach. We’ve entered the annual sandcastle building contest, spurred on by Katie's mom. We are ready to start our project; we love the images floating through our heads of the bathing beauties we’ll create. We are not intimidated when we see other children and adults flock to the beach to take their places at the allocated sand squares. We are in our own world, we are in the flow; the outside world floats away as we start to dig. 

Katie and I each know our tasks at hand and encourage each other to work hard and fast. The tide will come in little by little so we need to work efficiently. The thought of our beauties being swept out to sea, slowly being transformed into mermaids of the underworld thrills us. We are creating, we are inventing, we are giving life to creatures who will become part of underwater playgrounds we know nothing about but fully acknowledge and envision in our creative minds, so real and palpable. 

An hour before the tide sweeps our beauties out to sea, the judges come round to observe and take notes. We sit on our knees in front of our masterpiece anticipating and praying for a positive outcome. We are ecstatic when it is announced that we have won first prize! What a thrill, what an affirmation for our young creative minds. Our prize is a handmade multi-coloured kite and a cameo on local television. The whole day was a dream for our 12-year-old selves, a boost in the direction we would both eventually take in our careers as educators. That day, we became play-makers for life.
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Turning sandcastles into companies

My stepmother and I pull off the 94. Our meeting spot is just off the highway at the legendary German restaurant Metzger’s. It’s not long before Katie joins us in a booth. The wall above is plastered with black and white photos of generations of customers. We marvel at the menu and its jovial combinations of spaetzle, meatloaf, beets and cucumbers — comfort foods that mothers have been serving up for centuries. We laugh and joke about foods we loved as kids and how those tastes and smells never leave us. This restaurant is a cultural playground with its coat of arms plastered around and its oom-pah music bellowing around the room. We feel rooted here, having come from immigrant families who arrived in North America two and three generations ago from Iceland, Germany, England, Sweden, and Latvia. It’s the joy of being together over a tasty meal and the memories this evokes that encourage me to turn the conversation to play, and what it means to us, because funnily enough my first creative playmate has become a rather well-known expert on play. 

She found that while she was sculpting, she would lose track of time, problem solve and strategize in a medium other than words, thinking with her hands.

Katie discovered the anchor idea for her company, Wholemindesign, and her most recent project “Play-Making Now,” in art school, where she studied sculpture. She found that while she was sculpting, she would lose track of time, problem solve and strategize in a medium other than words, thinking with her hands. She could unlock spaces of ability as a thinker that she didn't know she possessed. Since then, she’s devoted herself to helping others unlock their own creative potential. 
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When working with a new client, she begins by asking  two essential questions: “Are you willing to pay attention to the indisputable scientific evidence that a lack of play harms our ability to feel whole and creates debilitating anxiety, stress, and even depression? And are you willing to shift your behavior, step out of your own way to allow more room for play-making in your life?” 

Her conviction is that “play” and “making” are rights and not privileges. She believes that all of us have a lifelong need for play, and that play is essential to both our own individual and collective well-being.

The element of play in our lives

In his visionary book, Homo ludens: a study of the element of play in culture, Dutch art historian Johan Huizinga (1872-1945) writes, “Civilization arises and unfolds in and as play.” He considers play as “a well defined quality of action which is different from ‘ordinary life’... [it] lies outside the antithesis of wisdom and folly - free from the binary of right and wrong that bind ordinary life.” His most daring axiom is this: “True play knows no propaganda; its aim is in itself, and its familiar spirit is happy inspiration.” He believes that play is the true sculptor of civilization, but in the end, he concedes: “the role and riddle of play is a question that eludes and deludes us to the end, in a lasting silence.” 

Play is indeed an act of resistance against letting our childlike flow die. I know deep down inside that play is what keeps it alive in me. I believe poet Mary Oliver also knew this when she wrote just seven words as her “Instructions for living a life:” 

Pay Attention

Be astonished

Tell about it

Katie shows me photos of her grandson and tells me a story about playing with him. He's 18 months old, a beautiful age for exploring objects; he sits and touches and manipulates with his hands, a sculptor of his world, reveling in its colourful immediate form-filled makeup, absolutely fearless and safe in himself, and with the world around him. She revels in his curiosity and drinks it in, as from a fountain of youth. She laughs about how easy it is to take care of him. We remember ourselves as young mothers wanting to play with our children for hours, forever leaving behind the cleaning, the cooking, the chores; all of the extraneous responsibilities of a young mother that she as a grandmother can leave behind.

A haven of creativity

After we’ve eaten, we make the short drive to Katie's home, a haven for mindful and creative play. The structure naturally fits into the landscape: the straight lines lead you in, and you surrender to its openness and spaciousness. As the front entrance closes behind you, the 365 degree windowscape opens up in front of you, creating a sense of communion with the surrounding forest and its endless shades of green and yellow; trees and shrubs, flowers blossoming and swaying, soothing the soul. No need for air conditioning here; the fresh, oxygen-rich breeze filters in through the screens. Inside, every wall has a story to tell, covered with photos, hook tapestries, and contemporary art. It is an art gallery and a workshop as well as a home. So many wonderful pieces combine together in an extraordinary living puzzle — it is pure genius design.

Our conversation continues as does our journey through the senses: the smell of homemade chocolate chip cookies and lemon ginger tea, the taste of fresh blueberries and strawberries, the touch of the velvet sofa and pillows. Sinking into a restful corner for more talk and a short rest before getting back on the road, the sound of our laughter dances through memories of being young and fearless. We immerse ourselves in the flow of this wonderful magical moment together, full of loving chit chat about everything and anything. 
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Playground in my mind

I don’t remember much about what happened to our friendship after visiting Katie on Nantucket Island that summer long ago. As Richard Powers’ character Todd describes his friendship with Rafi in his book “Playground” (page 92), “We were living that epic work in progress, watching it unfold in front of us move by adolescent move…. Life would never again be so saturated in possibility. Only Rafi’s and my running skirmish down those crowded halls… - still means anything to me. Only the love that I bore Rafi Young still needs replaying, before the game is done.”

And for me now, only Katie and my running up and down the beach collecting shells and seaweed for our beach beauties still means anything to me, and only the love that I bore her still needs replaying before the game is done. We wrap each other in a big embrace, so satisfied and grateful - our friendship will forever be a living and breathing playground in my mind.

The joy of being moved

Driving away, I feel a vitality and longing to create a more playful world – for myself and for others around me. To be present to life each day as it is; to notice it, even or especially the smallest details, and not to become blasé about this remarkable life. 

It is far too easy to become indifferent to both the beauties and the horrors of the world.

It is far too easy to become indifferent to both the beauties and the horrors of the world. To become immovable or unimpressed. But I know it’s only right to be curious, to be moved by the world around me, to pay attention, and to share what I see; this is what Mary Oliver so generously did, and what my dear friend continues to do.