There Lies Adventure...

When I was a little girl, I would pull up my old faded overalls, sometimes both legs at once.  You, see, there was an excitement that welled up in me every single time I saw that there was a yellow sun stretching its arms towards me.  I loved being outside.  I was mostly a solitary child, spending a good amount of time outside on my own, and fortunate enough to have a large front yard, backyard and big sloping hill to carve out the better part of a morning or afternoon.  Summers were glorious!  Living in the south, in NW Arkansas, perfect.  You have all 4 seasons, and a big wallop of a chance for many days of sunshine in the summer.

When I knew that I was to begin on one of the adventures, one that would keep me out of the house for a few hours, I strategized.  First, the comfortable t-shirt, the dependable overalls, the dusty tennis shoes, the smelly ones were best.  Second, an adventurer must have rations...to the kitchen I would go, and hoist myself up on the counter by the cabinet with the golden riches of peanut butter.  I would prepare my peanut butter and saltine crackers, and roll them in saran wrap for safe keeping in my overall side pocket.  No need for beverage, for where I was going I would surely discover a cool exotic stream called...garden hose.

As I left the safety of the house, I remember gingerly opening the screen door and looking left to right, in case there was danger...like a dog named Ginger.  I would try to escape out the screen door and slip to the right, to head in the backyard as quiet as I could.  As I turned my head looking backward, I would often have my leg met by fur.  Looking down, there would be Ginger, smiling up at me, as if to say...let's go.  I could never deny her big collie brown eyes..."aww...come on then", I would say.

In my time outside I would imagine going to different lands, discovering fossils, unknown minerals and rocks, strange plant life, or big monster fish.  It was a time that I cherish.  Having lived in a generation where outside play held only our imaginations, instead of real danger. Where a kid could run up and down a hill, roll around on a field of clover, or sneek around an old barn to catch a glimpse of yellow jackets.  Where a kid could stop and eat her peanut butter & crackers under a honeysuckle bush, looking up to blue sky, and wash it down with cold fresh water from a garden hose...all the while thinking....and believing...she was in the Amazon.

Here is where I stop my recollections, and start my present day adventures.  It is with a man, a biologist and angler from UK, that lives out adventures in his real life, in search for the unknown, the myth, the monsters in the night.  Jeremy Wade is my connection back to that time in my life where I could imagine unknown and strange things.  To that time of discovery, and ambition of seeing an adventure through from myth to reality.  I am in deep-like with this man that takes me along every episode, to a land that I only dreamed of before, and to waters that I imagined in my mind.  To see what lurks in the waters around the world, and not only to feel a shudder at the monstrous size or teeth, but to admire the creature that resides in our world.  Jeremy is a catch and release angler.  If he can give time to the fish to regain its strength from the catch, he releases it back into the water to remain in its hidden world. 

For me, April 6th will be a glorious day, when Jeremy shares new adventures with us on the television show, "River Monsters", seen on the channel, Animal Planet.  But, I best remember to have a supply of peanut butter & saltines, it might be a doozy of an adventure.  Well, and since the garden hose won't reach, I will settle for a civilized beverage.