Home Is Where the Fort Is - Vol. 1 Ed. 33
Mar 03, 2021 2:16 am
World Builders' Guild Newsletter
I destroyed the tree fort for the second time.
Correction: I didn't destroy it the first time, I just happened to be the one who wrecked it the second time.
It fell twice.
It was rebuilt twice.
Why did I do it? If I could remember, I'd tell you, but it may have had something to do with a breakup or a bad test grade or maybe I got benched on a sports team.
That's how unimportant my pre-teen struggles seem right now in the rearview.
What is important is that we rebuilt the fort again.
Every spring after the first real snow melt, we'd hurry into the forest behind the school field.
We knew every inch of the terrain and the seasons still delivered subtle changes. It's like we stepped into a portal every May and landed in a world only slightly rearranged from the one we knew. A big tree fallen here. A new brook gurgling over there. Saplings sprang up into young oaks.
We didn't even care about bugs or snakes. (Photo by Imat Bagja Gumilar on Unsplash)
With our sack of "borrowed" tools, we whittled away at branches, hauled logs, thatched roofs. Our perennial tree fort weathered every storm.
It was because of a storm, in fact, that we even had the idea to begin with.
In the late 90s, a violent fall derecho ripped a swath of terror across the northeastern United States. We spent the days waiting or the power to come back as you might expect: biking around the neighborhood looking for things to get into.
That's when we found it. The hurricane-force winds had slapped down dozens of ancient trees. It tore them clear out of the ground, roots and all. Some fell in a conga line of destruction that stretched to the woods' edge.
One massive root wall had collected a handful of other fallen trunks like a Lincoln Log lean-to draped over a conversation pit.
A few cleverly woven branches and a salvaged golf cart bench and we had ourselves a hideout.
I spent hundreds of hours, dozens of days maybe, in those woods. I felt a connection to the goings-on of that little patch of forest. We would often walk, collecting interesting branches in the casual silence of nature, losing track of time with every step deeper.
Our summer worlds were as big as the woods. That stronghold protected us from the struggles of an unknown future. In the safe woods, our seasons never had to change.
We wanted to live there forever.
To future worlds,
Matt Ventre
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