When I was in late elementary school, our neighbor watched my sisters and me during the summer. We’d walk down to her house when my mother left for work and, I’m pretty sure, some days we didn’t even go inside. The neighbor kids would come out and we’d take off. We started our adventures in their backyard, filled with wooden pallets, broken yard equipment, and cast-off kitchen gear. Then, when we’d constructed all the elaborate kingdoms we could or nearly come to blows over some arcana in the laws of our new little world, we’d head for the woods.
Acres of woods crisscrossed by fire roads spread out behind the neighbors’ house. We carved out fiefdoms and defended them. We walked in circles, trying hard to get lost so we could enjoy the thrill for a while and then get unlost. (This has come in handy in my adult life.) I think the oldest of us must have been 11ish. It was more than a little bit Bridge to Terabithia.
I’m not sure what Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods, would think of our forays into the woods. They certainly weren’t nature walks. I can identify the laurel and ladyslippers and wild elderberry of the woods of my youth, but I’m pretty sure we made up the name for the plant we called “dogberry.” We spent more time reconfiguring the complicated social hierarchy in our little group than observing the natural world.
I remember a heart-pounding sense of derring-do when we came upon a fire pit with a few empty beer cans in it or the carcass of an old car. (Other people came to our woods! And did illicit things!)
I remember my mind flashing often on the unmarked vans that prowled late-1980s imaginations, bogeymen who snatched children away. I devised contingency plans for attacks on myself and my compatriots and rehearsed them in my mind.
I remember crushing boredom. To this day, the sound of cicadas in the trees is the sound of “How many hours until Dad gets home?”
When I’m making plans for my own kids this summer, I don’t get wistful about just opening the door and letting them roam free. I’m comforted by the fact that they’ll spend their days with counselors who will keep them active and safe, occupy their minds, and help them make sense of the world. Too bad they won’t grow up with their mom’s killer sense of direction, however.
