>>28396308That got me in the nostalgia, anon. Exploring somewhat remote, slightly dangerous places back in the day, before the internet was really widespread and before cellphones were a thing -- there's something about that that I don't know if you can quite capture anymore. A real sense of discovery and adventure. Maybe I'm just old, though. Thank you so much for sharing, it took me back.
>>28396409Oh man, I used to do that with a (different) friend growing up.
Behind this shopping center nearish to my home (that was mostly dollar stores and other discount places,) next to a flat mini-desert of developed-but-unused land (you could get up onto the cliffside if you walked carefully, too!), there was a forest that stretched back unobstructed for a fair few miles. We used to go in there and just... make-believe, I guess. Kid worldbuilding, and of course we were looking for Pokemon while we had our little picnics and explored. Honestly it was pretty dangerous to just let us wander around alone like that for hours without cellphones or anything (bears, people,) but it seemed harmless at the time.
But crawling over huge, slippery, mossy fallen tree trunks to get over a rushing mountain creek, up the mountains and down the mountains, through hollows and briers and into fern-filled glades, and following animal trails through the dense thickets here and there, all the while just MAYBE hoping we'd see a Stantler or something -- it was one of the most magical and peaceful times of my life. I miss it, too.
I miss when I could believe in the fantastical, and when things were peaceful enough to let me explore. The world seems a lot darker now than it did back then, in so many ways.
I am so grateful for these threads. I really, really am. Thank you all for coming here, for whatever it is that draws you here. It's things like this that keep me a Pokemon fan more than anything else, honestly.
