That's right. Like my grandfather taught me when he was buiding a barn with his neighbors, you have to have a firm foundation. He was right. Once you have the basics right, you can build as high as you like... No firm foundation, you are a Leaning Tower of Pisa, forever biased.
We had a childhood most kids only dream about nowadays. If our chores were done-we were free. I spent hours-days-playing in the creek. We built dams out of rock and wood, caught crawdads and minnows, learned where the clay hid under the banks, soaked up the sights and sounds of wind and water and animals.
There was this one vein of blue clay-think Picts? or was it Celts?-we smeared ourselves head to toe one day and went home when it dried. Keep in mind, we had a hand pump and a wringer washer! I thought mom was going to kill us!
We made bowls and caught tadpoles, our imaginations knew no bounds.
We just accepted the tracks in the bed of our creek as one more normal thing, no more remarkable than anything else there.