Writing It

It was all because of that poem.

A rhyming poem by Valine Hobbs called One Day When We Went Walking. I found it when I was little — maybe 5 or 7. It's in my all-time favorite collection, The Tall Book of Make Believe compiled by Jane Werner.

I read and reread that poem so many times, I still have it memorized. It begins like this:

One day when we went walking,
 I found a dragon's tooth,
 A dreadful dragon's tooth....
"A locust thorn," said Ruth

I felt as though that poem was about me. I used to find things too, and imagine them to be magical, wonderful, exciting other things. But, but, but…the ending of the poem always bugged me. The last stanza reads:

Next time that I go walking-
 Unless I meet an elf,
 A funny, friendly elf-
 I'm going by myself! * 

I loved the ending because the person in the poem doesn't give in, but instead decides to keep walking and finding things. At the same time it bothered me because the only way the main character thought she could continue to play this imaginative finding game was to go alone—or to go with an elf (although who wouldn't love to meet an elf?)

One day — years and years and years and years and years after first reading that poem — I decided to do something about it. I said to myself, What if. . . What if, instead of going off alone, there was a way to draw friends into playing this imagination finding game? Abra-ca-dula metza-ca-bula! With Valine Hobbs' poem as inspiration, I created One Day I Went Rambling.