This is the hidden entrance to what used to be my favorite stomping grounds as a kid. The neighborhood kids and I used to pretend we were Native Americans (is this the PC term? I don’t know anymore) living in these woods. We all picked names that sounded like those of the indigenous variety. I wasn’t particularly creative so I was always Pocahontas. We set up teepees, elected a leader, had a medicine woman, and we even had hunters. (Thankfully I don’t remember having much of a Lord of the Flies situation in our woods)
It was only when the brave kids went on adventures that a stream was discovered deep in the forest and a separate entrance (picture above) to our forts. We used to pick onion grass and mash it up and pretend it was food. We peeled bark off of trees and imagined it was animal skin, we collected rocks to create boundaries between teepees. We were so creative. I wish I had a picture of how everything looked back then. Then again, maybe my naive child mind pictured everything as amazing and brilliant when in reality it didn’t look all that great.
Now, since no one has played in those woods in more than a decade, the place is overgrown with weeds and grass and there is absolutely no trace of what it used to be—a place where imaginations soared through the treetops! :/
