The Imagination Running Wild Challenge thus far has been a “learning as we go” experiment. We hope you had fun, learned and saw something new, and changed the rail-trail world. I hope you will keep choosing adventures into the next year.

December is no different and perhaps these activities will be an even stronger way to embrace the notion that there are no rules except the ones you make up as you go. Hopefully these activities will nourish your creativity and imagination….

  1. 1)  Read 13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird by Wallace Stephens –https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45236/thirteen-ways-of-looking-at-a- blackbird

    Pick another place, person, thing, or animal that you saw on the rail-trail and try to look at it with 13 perspectives.

  2. 2)  Listen to the 2020 “The Keep Going Song” created and performed by the Bengsons:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cs-ju_L9pEQ

    Create your own verse(s) and sing it- on the trail, in the shower, while cooking, or with or without green eggs and ham. You get the idea!.
    If you like the song, check out this version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXn1hX4Rklk

  3. 3)  Try to “think like an ecosystem.” Reflect on the web of relationships that makes our world what it is, or as John Muir put it: “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.” Pick one thing in nature and see where the links take you. https://www.ecoliteracy.org/article/thinking-ecosystem
  4. 4)  Try your hand at drawing, sketching, or doodling either a favorite spot on the rail-trail or something you saw on one of your trail adventures.
  5. 5)  Find two historical locations on the rail-trail that have nothing to do with railroad or coal and coke mining history. Imagine other West Virginia identities.
  6. 6)  Imagine the choreography of a rail-trail dance. Start dancing or keep dancing.