Author Barbara Kingsolver once wrote that there are many other things she'd rather have her children remember than the back of her car seat as she chauffeured them from one activity to the next. And, yeah, there are a lot of things I'd rather have my kids remember other than the shuffling from one activity to the next, or worse, the perpetual glare of televisions and computers.

The other day as I was leaving my house at lunch I had to step over a pile branches that had been cut from our tree, but not removed. They were there at the request of my twin boys who find such things useful.

Across from the pile of branches is a small tree, and beneath that a large driftwood log we salvaged from the nearby river. The log is full of pieces of nailed wood and suspended by ropes tied to the tree. This is a fort or even a house, depending on the day.

The other Saturday I was home with the boys doing chores and whatnot when they, after a few Saturday morning cartoons, announced they were going to their room to play. On several occasions the boys have retreated to their room for play periods that last an entire day and this was one of them.

Peaking inside, I could see Matchbox cars, dinosaurs and the like sprawled out across the bed, the shrieks, shrills and laughter of small voices coming through the door, accompanied by the odd THUMP, that would send me upstairs only to find two fair-headed 5-year olds intensely imagining some world they created.

Outside, in the fallen tree branches, there's no telling what wonders will come of the foliage as it lays across the lawn that is already littered with hammers and other instruments they've collected.

Our neighbor from down the street, Sophie — a female version of my boys if there ever was one — declared that we should keep the branches and play beavers, perhaps building a dam that would only serve to dam up the imaginary river in my yard.

As a boy, I can remember my best friend Chris Gray and I building a ramshackle tree house in his backyard. It was our raft or riverboat as we floated down the mighty Mississippi, me Huck to his Tom, living out the adventures that Mark Twain wrote down, and those we embellished as we sat aloft the tree house, dressed in overalls our parents had purchased because we were, well, obsessed with a tale of two boys living free near the banks of Old Muddy.

Remembering it is like taking a trip backwards, seeing the muddy water of Old Man River below us as we dangled our feet from a sappy tree that sat against the privacy fence in his yard. It was as if the anxiousness of a busy Los Angeles life suddenly disappeared and nowhere was there a car or any sign of 20th century life to be found.

As I sat at my computer the other day and listened to the small voices emanate from their bedroom, laughing and shrieking, I wondered what worlds they have created. And I smiled because I knew that whatever worlds they imagined, those boys would only be the wiser for it later in life.

If only I could play like that now, I thought to myself. Just for a few moments I could forsake all the trappings of this world for another and just create, with unbridled abandoned, and drift away downriver wherever the current takes me.