The Fort

Pouring rain makes it so we can’t take my nephew outside today. He sits in my mom’s lap, listening to her read books about tractors, his favorite topic of conversation. It’s too bad. His grandparents have a new ground-level fort for him to play in. You have to duck under a fir tree’s blunt needles to get inside the natural tent made by its trunk and branches. It’s a one-room play area—a good starter fort, if you’re only a year and a half old.

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My siblings and I are well-versed in the art of building forts. Distinct from tree houses and other walled structures, forts require nothing more than one’s imagination and any materials nature has at hand. Over the years on Jewett Street, we constructed many temporary play areas, but only one Fort worthy of the name. It actually is one of the first things you will see if you turn in to my parents’ driveway and look to your right. Running parallel to the path the car takes, the Fort was accessible by foot, bicycle, bike-turned-horse, and I think we may have flown in one time, back when we were first reading Harry Potter? Or maybe I’m making that up. At any rate, it was the center of our outdoor imagination games.

Avid readers of the Redwall book series, our play usually consisted of quests, battles, and often some kind of physical competition such as an archery contest. (We loved Robin Hood, too.) The Fort was our home base, our Redwall Abbey, our Sherwood Forest. Only we knew its hidden paths and how to get there on them.

Every spring, as soon as the snow pack could conceivably be said to have melted, we’d be out there, eagerly raking the pine needles aside to re-form the hallways and rooms we knew by heart. We’d fix the stone fireplace, and remove the acorn shells that remained as the only evidence of the squirrels’ winter feasts. This was no shabby lean-to, after all. The three of us each had our own room, and there was a kitchen/banquet hall, as well as later additions such as parking for our bikes and a weapons room (storage for the various sticks that served as swords, daggers, dirks, and bows and arrows).

By far the most dangerous part of the Fort was the strapling pine tree that formed one of the banquet hall’s walls. For the more adventurous ones, it also served as a lookout tower. Realistically, there never was too much danger from the tree. It only was ten feet tall at the highest point. Its danger lay not in its height, but in its slim branches and trunk. I was a child with anxiety, so I was terrified to climb such an unstable tower. I’d cover my eyes, peeking through my fingers, certain that the branches would not hold, that my siblings would fall and break a rib, each time they served as a lookout. No such injuries ever occurred.

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We were able to be children, here among these trees. Our world was confined to about an acre of land that was infinite in its possibilities. Here we were explorers, warriors, and leaders. We learned what it was to be brave and noble through the art of play, and I’m proud of the stories we created and acted out together. The Fort served us well in this endeavor. It’s been years since we cleared the pine needles and claimed our personal quarters, but it is in its second life as my nephew and my mom explore its cobwebbed passages and clear out the dust. As long as there is imagination on Jewett Street, these woods will be home to adventurers and heroes.

Let the adventure begin.