Kids In The Woods

I didn’t grow up in the country, but thank the Lord we had woods near my house.   Looking back on my childhood has lead me to believe, now more than ever, that children should always have woods to play in. It’s a time of exploration and discovery. A time to experience and appreciate nature. A time for young imaginations to flourish and develop. 

Fortunately, our neighborhood had a couple of options for us to choose from. About a quarter mile away were “the big woods” - hundreds of forested acres with a large creek and huge limestone rocks to crawl on. However,  many times we opted for the “little woods” - a wooded lot in our subdivision.  It more than served the purpose for a bunch of kids caught up in building forts, hideouts, and blazing trails. 

What a place. It was as if God had made it for us.  The lot was at least two acres square and thickly wooded with pines and hardwoods. The privet hedge, blackberry bushes, and honeysuckle underneath the trees had paths hacked through it that ran from the road to halfway up a big hill that eventually gave way to someone’s backyard. There were large stumps with small cubbyholes that made great hiding places, and a little wet weather creek that snaked through the property. We caught minnows and crawdads there. For a bunch of neighborhood kids, it was a mystical, magical place.  

The little woods became our second home. We played army for hours in the trees, protecting America’s freedom with our Daisy BB guns.  A couple of us covered a deep indention in the ground with logs, sticks, and leaves, making it look like a natural part of the forest floor. It was the greatest hiding place of all time.  With proper timing during a game of chase, we could crawl underneath it and virtually vanish from our pursuer. After Christmas, we would drag every discarded tree in the neighborhood to the woods where they would be fashioned into fortresses - exclusive clubhouses with no girls allowed. 

One spring afternoon several of us headed down to the empty lot, armed with our BB guns. And to our shock, we discovered an enemy that was even greater than those we fought in our imaginations.  In the middle of our lush green Eden was a bulldozer clearing a space for a house. For a few moments, everyone just stared silently as the reality hit us that our paradise, the place we loved, was about to be claimed by the suburbs. For several weeks we would walk by and watch the construction workers pour concrete and set rows of block. Soon after, walls and a roof went up.  Finally, the dozier returned and ripped the underbrush and smaller trees from the ground. In just a half day, our refuge, our sacred refuge, became just another house on another lot. Except to all the kids on Hickory Circle. We grieved the loss of the little woods as if we had lost a close friend, because we had. Along with a big part of our childhood. 

To this day, I still like to walk in the woods. They’re a quiet, peaceful, healing place. Luckily, there are tree covered walking trails and a primitive disc golf course near my house that I will hike with my dogs in tow. Every time we head out, I’m flooded with memories of playing in the woods as a boy. I can thank the old vacant lot for that.  

Occasionally, I’ll take a drive through my old neighborhood.  I check out the house I grew up in, then slowly cruise around the circle to see other places I remember. Some have changed; others remain reassuringly the same.  However, there’s only one place I briefly stop. It’s a familiar spot on the last curve of the street, where a little house sits on an oversized lot. It’s my way of paying homage to a place that was the center of my young world so many years ago.