When I was a kid, I was allowed to do a lot of things that seem strange in hindsight. I kinda-sorta grew up in the suburbs, but there were a lot of woods around us. You could actually get lost in them if you weren’t familiar with the area, and just about every day my brother and I would explore them. These excursions usually included hatchets and machetes. We would hack away at thorn bushes to clear paths and cut down saplings with the hatchets, and were doing this well before either of us turned ten. We took the saplings and some branches cut from larger trees and built what we called “the fort.” At the time, neither of us knew that “fort” came from the word “fortress,” and this was definitely a less-than-impermeable structure. Really, it was a narrow path between two large rocks. We put branches and fallen trees over the top, making something resembling a roof, and stacked other branches on either side of the path for walls. At a certain point, probably when I was around eight, we finished and realized there was no door. But since this was essentially a collection of wood and rock, there was no problem: just remove a couple of branches, and you could walk in, no problem. From the “fort” we would shoot our bb guns, and later, pellet guns, at trees nearby, imagining that they were English soldiers while we were heroes from
Home on the Free Range
Home on the Free Range
Home on the Free Range
When I was a kid, I was allowed to do a lot of things that seem strange in hindsight. I kinda-sorta grew up in the suburbs, but there were a lot of woods around us. You could actually get lost in them if you weren’t familiar with the area, and just about every day my brother and I would explore them. These excursions usually included hatchets and machetes. We would hack away at thorn bushes to clear paths and cut down saplings with the hatchets, and were doing this well before either of us turned ten. We took the saplings and some branches cut from larger trees and built what we called “the fort.” At the time, neither of us knew that “fort” came from the word “fortress,” and this was definitely a less-than-impermeable structure. Really, it was a narrow path between two large rocks. We put branches and fallen trees over the top, making something resembling a roof, and stacked other branches on either side of the path for walls. At a certain point, probably when I was around eight, we finished and realized there was no door. But since this was essentially a collection of wood and rock, there was no problem: just remove a couple of branches, and you could walk in, no problem. From the “fort” we would shoot our bb guns, and later, pellet guns, at trees nearby, imagining that they were English soldiers while we were heroes from