As children, we collected them. On nature walks, we exchanged short, scraggly ones for those with wider girth.

If we were lucky, we’d find ones double our height. We used them to wade into tree-covered forests, to clear our paths toward a new adventure.

But nowadays, we just call them sticks. And most of us step over them every day, unaware they are covering the ground we walk on until we hear a crunch beneath our feet.

Last weekend, the Carbon County Environmental Education Center reminded children — and a handful of adults — just how handy, convenient and even fun a sliver of wood can be with just a touch of imagination.

“It’s not to become proficient with (a) stick,” Franklin Klock, a naturalist with the Carbon County Environmental Education Center, said of Saturday’s program. “It’s to get kids outside. Playing in green spaces is an extremely important thing.”

Some reasons why spending time outdoors is crucial to children’s growth, Klock added, are the positive effects it has on their emotional and cognitive development.

“It’s good for the body. It’s good for the soul. It’s good for the brain,” he said.

Odd though it may seem, in 2008, the stick was actually inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame, hailed as “an endless source of make-believe fun” and “the original building blocks for creative play.”

Klock recalled an instance not long ago when a group of second-graders from Penn-Kidder revealed to him the potential magic that comes with a bushel of sticks. The kids had come to the center for an afternoon field trip, but their bus had broken down. And it would be almost an hour until another one arrived.

So, Klock said he let the children loose in the dense wood behind the center.

“They ran like wild, uncaged animals,” he joked. “They didn’t know what to do with themselves.”

Klock watched as one boy picked up a stick, turning it into a sword, light saber and shotgun before leaning it against a tree. Another student placed a second stick to the trunk, and eventually, the children had built a tall, triangular shelter for themselves.

One student told Klock the shelter was to live in until they were rescued. Another said it was to start a signal fire.

A little girl told Klock it was a spaceship to fly home.

Retelling that story of childlike imagination in its purest form last weekend brought tears to Klock’s eyes.

“We need to allow boys and girls to do that more,” he said.

Among the activities offered Saturday were javelin throwing, fishing for paper fish and marshmallow roasting — all using sticks.

But for three girls, the afternoon was spent putting their skills to the test, as they attempted to build a shelter of their own.

Between them, Madison Sommers, 7, her cousin Kylie Sommers, 9, and their friend Julissa Gieniec, 7, gathered dozens of branches varying in size. One guessed they’d need at least a thousand to complete the hut.

But the girls didn’t mind wading through the muddy ground to collect them. According to Madison’s mother, Kristin Sommers, of Summit Hill, they play outdoors any chance they get.

“They just love being outside,” she said.