Ottawa’s newest brewery evokes Old-Ottawa charm – talking beer with Dominion City Brewing Co.

August 8, 2014August 8, 2014 ~ Hilary ~ 3 Comments

It was arguably the most perfect day to visit a brewery.

The sun was beating hot and heavy, my car windows were rolled all the way down, and I was hollering along to some catchy new Arkells song on my car stereo. I was excited. And thirsty.

It was the August long weekend, which meant I had driven back to Ottawa to visit some old friends and my younger brother. One of my favourite things about visiting the Capital after a long time away (since September!!) is scoping out all the interesting new businesses that have thrown open their doors. In fact, I almost fell off my bike looking at all of them.

But the one I was most anxious to visit was Dominion City Brewing Co., the brain and beer-child of friends Josh McJannett, Alex Monk, and Andrew Kent.

You see, back in March I got an inconspicuous email. It was from my friend Jessey, and it was about a new brewery her friends were involved with opening. Skip forward a few months, and you have me, driving probably a little too fast in search of an afternoon chat about craft beer.

Josh McJannett, one of the three founders of Dominion City Brewing Co.

I pull up to Dominion City Brewing soon after. It’s less than a week to opening date, and half a dozen-or-so friends are helping clean growlers, bottle beer, and keep spirits high. Josh steps out of the walk-in freezer in shorts down to his knees and black rubber boots that go just as high. Casual Sunday wear when you’re hanging out in the brewery.

Beer has been an important part of the three men’s lives. Josh smiles as he tells the story of how he and Andrew found their passion for pints. Around 2003, they, like many other university students, were spending a fair amount of time drinking beer. But for the two friends it was different – they spent their time and money at Vineyards Wine Bar Bistro in the ByWard Market. Sure they were drinking a lot of different types of beer, but they noticed one thing: the local options were limited. It was import-city. The brainstorming and daydreaming began, and two years ago, the friends (with Alex on board) started aggressively planning to open a brewery. After home brewing for years, they’re finally at a point where they have a commercial space to call their own.

Of course the beer scene has changed a bit since 2003.

For those who don’t know Ottawa, or for those who live under a rock in Ottawa, it’s no secret that the craft beer market is exploding in the city. Beau’s, Kichesippi, Beyond the Pale…all are relatively new ventures in the sipping scene. And they’re all awesome. I can say that because I drank at least one of each of their brews during my short time in Ottawa.

So I wanted to ask Josh what he thought was different about Dominion City. Perhaps that’s a null question, because maybe it’s enough that you’re making delicious beer. But still, I thought I’d toss out the question.

Fun fact! The inspiration for the three-leaf brewery emblem was inspired by former Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson's choice design for the Canadian flag. — Fun fact! The inspiration for the three-leaf brewery emblem was inspired by former Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson’s choice design for the Canadian flag.

Turns out it’s the link between country and city, urban and rural that Dominion City is hoping to evoke. That idea of place. And check it out – the brewery is in the middle of an industrial park in east Ottawa, about as “city” as it gets. But step inside, and your perspective shifts. You see a bar made of 100-year-old pine logs dredged and dragged from the bottom of the Ottawa River. There’s a wall constructed of dark, up-cycled wood planks salvaged from a barn in Almonte. A black-and-white street-scape of old Gatineau graces the edge of the bottle room.

The bottle room still in progress, but see those planks. They're (at least) a century old! How cool is that? — The bottle room still in progress, but see those planks. They’re (at least) a century old! How cool is that?

Appearance alone does not a brewery make. The beer itself carries the same city-country dichotomy. The local mentality is strong, with spent grains going to hungry piggies at nearby Castor River Farms, and most of their organic Red Fife wheat grown and milled in the Ottawa Valley. It’s local, from design to draft to drink.

And while I’m ogling over the prettiness of the bottle house area, Josh is the first to emphasize that this is a working brewery, the real deal. People can see back to the 15-gallon system, the tall metal vats where beer chemistry magic happens. It’s a warehouse. There’s no pretending here, but it’s honest and open and clean.

And, oh right, you probably want to know about the beers themselves, huh? Dominion City is launching with three main brews (descriptions condensed from the brewery’s website):

Two Flags IPA: An assertively hoppy by well-balanced and highly drinkable India Pale Ale. Flavours include burnt sugar, grapefruit, and a lingering hop bitterness. 7%
Town & Country Blonde Ale: An easy-drinking beer with a kick. Soft, malty sweetness and biscuit notes are combined with a mildly spicy and citrusy hop crispness. 5.5%
Earl Grey Marmalade Saison: Brewed with freshly-zested oranges and Bridgehead organic Earl Grey tea, this brew has contrasting fruity, spicy, and tart notes, with a dry and moderately bitter finish.

The branding for Dominion City Brewing Co. was designed by Chris Mantil, an Ottawa-based graphic designer. Click on the photo to go to his website.

Josh says the brewery hopes to bring in seasonal brews, but is keeping its focus on these three for the time being. The beer can be bought in 1.89L growlers or 750ml grumblers.

Community-built beer
You might have first heard of Dominion City Brewing Co. through Kickstarter.

The crowd-funding website was alight with support for the new brewery, with money being raised to fund the aforementioned bottling room and tasting bar. They surpassed their goal of $15,000, and, in the end, 273 backers contributed just over $19,600. Josh and I agreed – humbling was the word to describe the whole process.

Still, the support has gone far beyond the crowd-funding campaign. Dozens of friends have stepped up to help Josh & Co. do everything from washing to bottling to social media work. It’s been a team effort from start until doors open.

Speaking of that, it’s happening awfully soon. Tomorrow, in fact. The inaugural public drafts were poured at a party this past Tuesday, with the bottle shop opening its doors this Saturday, August 9. There’s going to be a food truck on hand, and lots of beer to sample. I won’t be in town, but it sounds like a hell of a way to spend a weekend afternoon, right? In the meantime, I’ll enjoy sipping my Town & Country here at home in Sudbury. Cheers to you, Ottawa!

Kegs and beer chemistry do-dads (technical name...) — Kegs and beer chemistry do-dads (technical name…)

Directions on how to get to Dominion City Brewing Co.

For more before and after photos of the brewery space, and shots of the awesome people involved, visit the Dominion City Brewing Co. Facebook page.

A new adventure, this time at home

March 19, 2014 ~ Hilary ~ 3 Comments

The last time I wrote to you, I was in a different world. Nepal – an intoxicating and exotic blend of new experiences and adventure.

One of several lessons learned during my travels is the importance of taking calculated risks. Decisions that are far enough outside my comfort zone that they’d make me scared and somewhat nauseous, but not so far that they are in the realm of dangerous or stupid. The line of calculated risk is a fine one to walk. While this was a mid-trip revelation, I have now come to realize that one of the biggest calculated risks I’ve ever taken happened not on my trip, but on the very night I left for Nepal.

Here’s what happened. On the afternoon of November 5 (departure day), my boyfriend Geoff and I went to buy him a kitchen table. He had seen an ad on Kijiji, and at 4:30 p.m. we found ourselves driving to this person’s house to pick up the new furniture addition. It turns out this couple, Pam and Carlos, were not only selling this table, but dozens of identical tables. And that’s not all. As it happens, Pam and Carlos had, for a year, owned and operated a Mexican restaurant in another northern Ontario community. The business went bust, and they decided to move back to Guatemala. That meant the garage, which did, indeed, hold that single table and chairs Geoff was looking for, also held a significantly large amount of barely-used kitchen equipment.

To make a long story of debate, concern, and spontaneity short, Geoff and I bought the kitchen equipment – more than $15,000 worth of griddles, cold prep tables, deep fryers, and ovens at a fraction of their original cost.

And that’s how an innocent trip to get a kitchen table slightly derailed my current life trajectory. Funny how that happens, huh? With my countdown to Nepal now sitting at around six hours, Geoff and I hustled to move the new kitchen equipment to his friend Honas’ garage. Somewhere between then and my departure, I casually pitched to Geoff the idea of opening an incubator kitchen.

Tangent time! What is an incubator kitchen, you ask? An incubator kitchen is a space for small food businesses to grow. It’s place where basement bakers and closet canners can expand and produce their food, in a kitchen that’s both well-equipped and commercially-certified. That means they don’t have to flesh out the thousands of dollars required for industrial kitchen equipment (especially the hood!), and can sell their goods in shops (something you can’t do in Ontario unless you are producing in a commercial kitchen). I was first exposed to the concept of incubator kitchens when I lived in Ottawa, and had three good food friends who were successfully expanding their businesses in the Capital’s first food incubator. I became obsessed, did tonnes of research, and eventually wrote this feature for the Ottawa Citizen about the city’s incubator scene. I think incubators in general are brilliant – spaces to foster creativity and build community. Places where ideas can go from paper to product. I have met so many people in Sudbury with so many incredible food ideas, and thought, “hey, why not?” this city is a place in need of something like this.

Back to the story. I left for Nepal. As you know.

Meanwhile, in the other dimension of Sudbury life that was existing parallel to my overseas adventures, Geoff was being a go-getter. This is something I like most about Geoff – he is a “do something” guy. Positive, energetic, and incredibly convincing, he took my talk of wanting to open an incubator kitchen and set the gears in action.

I’d get weekly updates during FaceTime dates with Geoff, and had the wonderful dilemma of having amazing opportunities happening both in Nepal as well as at home. The problem was that I didn’t want to miss out on any of them. I have learned that great amounts of opportunity/choice can sometimes cause the greatest amount of unhappiness – it’s the “fear of missing out” syndrome, I think. So, at the beginning of December I booked my plane ticket home, ready to jump into the exciting things happening in Sudbury. I arrived on February 10, and we’ve all hit the ground running ever since.

The Motley Kitchen logo, created by Over the Atlantic, a talented and generous local graphic design team.

Our new space is called The Motley Kitchen, and we’re opening in an old restaurant space in the heart of downtown Sudbury. Myself and the four other partners, as well as countless wonderful friends, have been working tirelessly in the past months to renovate the space in preparation for an early spring opening date.

The thing is, this whole opening a business thing isn’t cheap. Our team has incredible ideas and a surprisingly large roster of varied skills, but all the money to-date has been coming out of our own pockets. So, here’s what I am very humbly coming to ask you, readers (if you’re still there…Bueller? Bueller?).

We have launched a crowd-funding campaign in order to cover some of the capital costs associated with opening The Motley Kitchen. We’re aiming to raise just a shade shy of $22,000, and have just passed the $10,000 mark, with a dozen days left.

The future site of The Motley Kitchen (this was post taking down ugly green awnings and a painted "restaurant" sign on the window... — The future site of The Motley Kitchen (this was post taking down ugly green awnings and a painted “restaurant” sign on the window…

Bye, bye, old sign! Steve and Chris approve of the change.

If you support small food businesses, great ideas, and neighbourhood revitalization, I’m asking you to please click through and take a look at our crowd-funding campaign page, “An incubator kitchen for downtown Sudbury.” On this page you can find much more information about The Motley Kitchen, where the $22,000 will go, and more about me and my fellow talented partners.

Natalie and I with the freshly-printed posters advertising our crowd-funding campaign

This blog has seen me through a lot – university cooking adventures, travel journeys, DIY projects, and personal challenges. And now it has brought me here – to the doorstep of small business ownership, to the chance to make a real difference to people who are passionate about food. If you’ve been reading for a week or for four years, please consider helping us out. I promise to take you along on the ride through blog posts, but first I need your help to get us started.

One of The Motley Kitchen bistro menu items: fish tacos.

Saturday mornings in Swayambhu

January 25, 2014January 26, 2014 ~ Hilary ~ 3 Comments

I have hardly written anything about Kathmandu.

Outside of a slightly-overwhelmed entry at the beginning of November, the capital of Nepal remains almost completely unmentioned, both on this site and in my notebook.

There’s a reason for the exclusion: I don’t like the city that much. I’m already not much of a city person back in Canada. Sometimes it seems as though Kathmandu has stared into the depths of my soul, made note of all the factors that lead to my big city frustrations, and has subsequently made the decision to embody them all. The pollution that causes me to create a modernist art piece every time I blow my nose, the overcrowding, the daily “I almost got hit by a motorbike” encounter…

Still, I think my lack of Kathmandu-related posts is a bit of a slight. The city has been my home for about three weeks of my trip, and is my home base between the days and weeks I’ve spent travelling to other parts of the country. If I know anything about home cities, it’s that they have flaws. But they also have wonderful, redeeming qualities that force pen to paper, in a way just as magnetic as those more exotic destinations.

So here’s to Kathmandu! Thanks for being my home these past months.

—

What has me captured is the mornings.

Every time I’m back in Kathmandu, I stay in a neighbourhood called Swayambhu, at a wonderful, cheap little hostel called The Sparkling Turtle. The area is named after the giant Buddhist temple, Swayambhunath, that sits high on the hill overlooking its streets and alleys.

Yesterday was my last Saturday morning in Kathmandu. Saturdays are relaxation and cleaning days in Nepal, the single day off every week. The city streets come alive with bazaars, and people run the streets with wet hair, from a day of showering and laundry. I decided to wake up early to experience one last day off in my adopted ‘hood.

Just as we all have our weekend routines at home, so too do the residents of Swayambhu. Walking to one of the two roads that wrap its dusty arms around the grounds of Swayambhunath, I’m swept up in foot traffic. It travels clockwise, the designated direction to travel around all Buddhist and Hindu temples. Most of the people carry a garland of mala beads, reciting mantras and spinning prayer wheel after prayer wheel. Click, click. Click, click. For them, this is Saturday routine: wake up early, walk around Swayambhu, make your offerings. I’ve been implanted to observe this tiny part of their life.

One of the many smaller temples along the route

The air is thick with juniper smoke, garbage burning smoke. The dust being kicked up from feet and micro buses creates a perpetual haze, one that basks the streets in that lovely golden hour lighting.

Monkeys appear as small silhouettes in the bare tree branches. One uses the hydro lines to tight-rope over the road, while others leap from tree to tree. Hairy limbs flail and grab. I hardly even flinch at the monkeys anymore, except when I go to take a photo of one, and he stares at my iPhone as if thinking “yeah, my creepy hand-feet could probably steal that.” I walk away quickly. Thuggish dogs bark and bear teeth, uncastrated anger, which I’m certain has been organized into canine street gangs.

Tightrope monkey! Click the photo to expand.

There are more clothing vendors out on Saturday mornings. The bright colours of fleece leggings call out to the oranges, greens, purples of next door vegetable vendors. Behind me, a non-thug dog lies passed out in the sun.

Where I buy my oranges and bananas every time I'm in the neighbourhood. — Where I buy my oranges and bananas every time I’m in the neighbourhood.

Towering over the mini bazaar is the Buddhapark. Despite living so close by, I hadn’t been there until this morning. This is where I sit now, on cool white marble, almost in the shade. A metre away from me, a monk sits chanting, his voice punctuated by a shrill bell in his left hand. He’s reading from a Lama book, and there’s a small plastic prayer wheel sitting next to it, spinning from the light of the sun. Inside a painted brown brick building (it looks like it’s made of chocolate!), hundreds of butter lamps flicker and dance.

I’m watched attentively by three giant gold Buddhas, the statues after which the park is named. They stare unmoving at me, and at all the others who stand, eyes closed, worshiping their presence. A monkey climbs onto the donation box in front of the centre Buddha. I picture it coming to life, unfolding its legs with the cracking of stiff bones, and giving the monkey a good scare.

Old ladies offer yellow and purple marigolds into a gold urn at the base of the stairs. People take a lot of pictures, but don’t smile. This isn’t so much about capturing vanity as it is documenting a sense of place. Off in the distance, the smog has turned distant neighbourhoods the colour of the sky. Sequined saris glitter distractingly. The singing monk is eating an orange and counting his money.

I move on into the morning. I pull back a curtain, a door-less, nameless room filled with locals. It’s not a restaurant in the way that we know them, but rather an assembly of a half dozen tables and benches where you sit and eat whatever is put down in front of you. Tender pieces of buff stabbed with toothpicks; other parts of buff that will remain a mystery; a spicy potato broth, its red surface dipped with roti. Everyone stares when I sit down, but nods in either approval or hilarity when I ask for tea in Nepali.

An after breakfast walk: paved roads meet dirt roads. Running facets meet water pumps. Poverty meets wealth and people talk on smart phones amidst the rubble. Children play in empty lots: garbage on top of garbage on top of dirt. The monks chant on, the day moves forward. A storefront has been transformed into an informal animal market, birds and bunnies. My face twists into a grimace as I wonder if their fate is in our arms or on our plates.

I’m having my second Saturday morning tea, and I’ve let it sit too long. It’s milk tea, and a slimy film has formed over the surface. But I don’t mind. Saturdays aren’t about rushing, or about drinking tea quickly. Saturdays are about sitting and thinking and appreciating that this is the last Saturday like this that I’ll have.

(PS: Don’t mind the film-esque photos…I didn’t bring my SLR camera and have just discovered the wonders of VSCO cam filters on my iPhone…)

Throwback Thursday: Lukla market

January 23, 2014January 21, 2014 ~ Hilary ~ 4 Comments

The Internet has created something called Throwback Thursdays. You’ve probably heard of them. They are usually headed up by a #hashtag. Every week on said day, my Instagram and Facebook feeds are chalked full of posts and photos from memories past. I’ve never contributed anything to the bank of nostalgia that is Throwback Thursday, but I always enjoy seeing what friends decide to share, and thought it’s never too late to start myself. So I’m basically going to use Thursdays as a day to share entries from my Nepal trip that have been written/half written, but haven’t been posted yet. I feel guilty about that. They need to be liberated from the ever-expanding “Trip Journal” folder on my mini laptop, and set free from the pages of my notebook.

PS: Fittingly, the event described in this first post actually happened on a Thursday! Bonus!

—

It was a happy coincidence that the last day of my Everest Base Camp trek was a Thursday.

Thursdays are market days in Lukla, the most popular jumping in spot to the EBC trails. I was anxious to experience bustling market life in a new country. No matter where I go, they’re always home to an eclectic group of people, and I love watching the vibrancy of the gathering spot.

The Lukla market is right next to the airport runway. On my way down the air is sucked away by the rotor of a helicopter. I walk a little faster. When a plane comes in to land or take off, the sound of the aircraft reverberates around the stone courtyard, making it sound as though the aircraft could at any minute come bursting through the wall.

Vendors sit on blankets spread out over the dirt. Piles of oranges, ginger root and tiny sugar bananas are being sold everywhere, and form a maze for walkers to navigate. The smell of citrus fills the air, as peels are tossed to the ground, squirts of juice spraying into the surrounding air.

Up top, I watch in a trance as butter is unwrapped from a block the size of a small stool. The block is carved away at with a metal spatula, scraped into pink plastic bags, and handed over to its purchaser. There’s dry butter, too, in the form of cubes that look like tiny ginger candies, or Narnia’s Turkish delights.

Bamboo baskets line the walls, awaiting the loading of the day’s purchases, anticipating the walk home. Women and men carry roosters and chickens with their feet tied together, yelling over poultry squawks into mobile phones.

I am hypnotized by the butcher section of the market. Large wood tables are lined in a row, with hunks of buff sitting on top. Men chop at the red meat with crude knives, particles of bone and ligament flying through the air. It’s weighed on a tiny metal scale, like the ones we used in elementary school to learn about measurements. A woman counts paper rupees on top of one of the carcasses, which are now vaguely smelling in the humid mountain air. A dog with swollen nipples sits under the table, in a prime position to snatch up any and all parcels of meat that fell below.

Next to the buff table, goat carcasses sit at ground level. There is a live goat overseeing the scene, an irony which is both amusing and sadly foreboding.

I’ve been to many markets in Nepal since this Thursday in Lukla, but none can compare to the buzz of a local village market. You get a sense that it’s a special event each week, one that invites camaraderie, as women and men walk hours from outlying villages to stock up for the week ahead. The smells, the sights, the people – it was the best “welcome back from spending 20 days in the mountains” party I could have asked for.

Playtime.

January 21, 2014 ~ Hilary ~ 7 Comments

Hello all! I have just returned to Kathmandu after spending the last week-and-a-bit in a rural village called Gatlang. I first travelled through Gatlang right before Christmas when trekking the Tamang Heritage Trail, and have since harboured a bit of a crush on its isolation, natural splendour, and kind people. When in Gatlang the first time, I stayed at the Parpati Kunda Home Stay, with Tashi Lama, Reyjalmo, and their five daughters: Phurpo Mendo (14), Sita (11), Dawa Mendo (eight), Phurpo Dolmo (four) and Nima (eight-months-old). They were one of the most lovely families I have ever been fortunate enough to meet.

The Lama family, in front of their Gatlang home

While staying with Tashi, his two brothers, Anil and Santosh, said they were interested in creating a website for the home stay and the village, but had no idea how to do it. Long story short, that’s why I was in Gatlang again. Many posts will be written over the coming days about my time spent there – expanded versions of essays and ramblings scribbled in my Moleskine, pages curled by the heat of the fire. In the meantime, though, here’s the first on a concept we all know and love: playtime.

—

Back at home, I think we’re doing playtime all wrong.

I’m coming at this not as a mother or a teacher or an older sister of a small sibling, but as someone who used to have a hell of a time playing. Inside, outside, in the bush, on the rocks – when I was a kid, playtime was dirty and creative. Knees looked like battle zones; scars from running (and subsequently tripping) with Popsicles, legs bruised and bumped from too many sessions of hide-and-go-seek tag. We were The Generation of kids right before the Internet became a household name. As such, we experienced recess, after school neighbourhood play dates, and long summer evenings in a way that did not involve Farmville or an early onset of carpal tunnel from smart phones. It helped that my parents were adamantly opposed to anything that resembled a game console (“but mooooom, how am I ever going to get better at Donkey Kong?!”) and that I remember them having to make a suspicious number of phone calls just as I got connected to my dial-up internet-enabled Neopets account.

Ok, not the best example of be engaging in childhood play, but the best one I had access to from Nepal... — Ok, not the best example of be engaging in childhood play, but the best one I had access to from Nepal…

Point is: when I was a kid, playtime was more free. That sounds stupid, and it’s hard to explain, but it’s true. Yes we had some play equipment in our school yards, but for the most part, we were left to our own devices to create something to do. Hence the climbing of icy rocks to train for my future Everest summit attempt, the use of dead trees at an old Macleod Public School (Sudbury reference, folks) as teeter-totters, etc. etc. The most fun I remember having at recess was when in grade three, for a number of consecutive lunch hours, my friends and I pretended to be cats, and ran on all four through the bush area next to my elementary school.

Playtime was messier, but it sent our imaginations to other places, it created bonds between kids, and it taught us that if we fell over and scraped our elbows, we needed to get back up again.

Maybe I’m out-of-touch with the reality of playground politics today, but it seems to me as though kids in the Western world aren’t having so much fun anymore. Or maybe it’s that the idea of fun has been redefined, to include concepts like iPhone emojis and Facebook. Whatever it is, playtime seems less focused on the imagination/collective side of things, and more based on established-play-structure/individual ideals.

Now that we have that rant out of the way, please accompany me to Gatlang, where, as I mentioned, I have just spent a week surrounded by a household and village of young children.

I was looking forward to returning to Gatlang for many reasons, but one of the main ones was to see the Lama family again. I had all but adopted Phurpo Dolmo, the four-year-old, last time around. We had worked up such a playtime rapport that she insisted on calling me “ama,” which means “mom” in Nepali. In December, Phurpo Dolmo’s life revolved around a single yellow balloon.

When I returned this time, I wanted to bring something for Phurpo Dolmo and the rest of Tashi’s daughters. Hidden in the zippered depths of my backpack was a 50-pack of balloons (I didn’t even have to buy them…turns out Marlon was carrying an extra bag!), as well as a large pad of drawing paper, crayons and pencil crayons that I got at a convenience store in Kathmandu.

That first night in Gatlang was a party, in the most innocent and heartwarming of ways. Each of the girls chose a balloon (all different colours, of course), and the fun that ensued was electric.

It was one of the most uninhibited and pure joys I have ever witnessed. Four children (Nima sat in Reyjalmo’s arms chewing on her balloon) laughing breathlessly as they try desperately to not let their newly-filled balloons touch the ground of their home. (When we were kids, my brother and I would pretend the carpet in our living room was balloon-consuming lava. Turns out the stakes are raised when there is a legitimate risk of your balloon landing in the large fire hearth used to cook meals.) The happiness and energy in that room was contagious. We had to start tying the inflated balloons with a string because the kids wanted to inflate/deflate them so many times.

The next day, word had spread amongst the children of Gatlang. I woke up to a yard filled with kids, all yelling “one balloon!!” whenever they saw me. Soon, there were balloons everywhere. I felt like I could have done a census on the number of children in Gatlang based on the number of balloons doled out.

My balloons bring all the kids to the yard

Walking around the village later in the afternoon, every kid I saw had a balloon dangling from their lips, huffing and puffing into it, and subsequently letting it go, the coloured piece of latex spiralling through the air and into the dirt. I was amazed by how something so simple could keep kids entertained for such a long period of time.

Over the next few days, I witnessed many more examples of what I consider “real” playtime: Tashi’s daughters colouring on a pad of paper, rather than an iPad; Phurpo Dolmo’s afternoons spent successfully convincing me to pick her up and spin her around like a merry-go-round. A favourite game involved me sitting, either Phurpo Dolmo or Dawa Mendo on my lap, while we pretended they were on a roller coaster, me making creaky wooden roller coaster sounds as I slowly moved the kids “uphill” and sent them plummeting over the precipice of the imagined peak. On the last night, the girls fashioned toys out of single shoelaces and pieces of wood they had found out front.

It was playtime free of the liability worries that stifle playtime at home. It was playtime where children wave pieces of firewood like swords, and where mud and rocks may not be the same as a swing and slide, but kids make do. Parents aren’t always watching like hawks (not to mention hovering like helicopters), not because they don’t care, but because they trust their kids and know that a few minor bumps and bruises aren’t a cause for concern, but rather a valuable lesson. Fantastical games and stories flourish in a playtime that’s not constrained by fences and rules.

Sulhav, one of the three-year-old boys in Gatlang.

The Western playgrounds of today are literally designed to minimize liability – can we please stop trying to architect fun, and instead just let it happen organically? This is a plea to stop blanching school yards of trees, rocks, hiding spots; kids are meant to climb and jump and leap, and yes, sometimes even get hurt. Maybe I will feel differently when I’m a parent, but I believe the best play-thing you can give a kid is an imagination.

In Gatlang the kids are scrappier. The hands and clothes and faces are so dirty. But the laughs and smiles come generously. Creative and innovative. Simple.

It’s playtime, the way playtime is meant to be. Children, as children are meant to be.

Hilary Makes

A doorway into my world. Sometimes an adventure.