The Woods

Sometimes in my conversations with people the subject comes around to woods.  I'll ask them if they had woods to play in when they grew up. Those who didn't grow up with woods will give me a blank look, or they'll tell me they had a large back yard.  Yet those who grew up with woods will get that far-away look in their eyes. 

I'm one of those who gets that far-away look in my eyes.  I grew up with woods.  As a child in the northern part of Washington State, we lived in Bellingham, on the South side of town, between an area called Fairhaven and a scenic road by the name of Chuckanut Drive.

Across from our house were miles of untouched woods.  I guess I date myself by saying, "in those days".  But it's a true statement.  In those days we kids could wander the woods all day safely, never running into or worrying about derelict individuals nor coming to the end of the woods.  The woods went on forever and they were all ours.

The neighbor boys (the Osborn Boys), my brother, and I were best of friends and we ran the woods.  We never walked.  We ran at a jog which we could keep up all day long.

Directly across from our house was what we called the Rain Fort.  Named for the huge, mammoth, Fir Tree that covered the ground beneath it.  It was a place where we could play on rainy days and not get wet.  What we did on those days was grab tools from our father's garages and take them over to the Rain Fort.  There we'd hammer whatever could be hammered and saw whatever could be sawed.  However, we tended to forget to bring the tools back home when we called it a day.  Many tools were lost to the Rain Fort and surrounding woods.

The volcanic activity of centuries ago had left a pile of rocks on the top of an incline in the woods.  We called this Mount Baker.  Although it wasn't the real Mount Baker, visible from these rocks, in our childhood minds it represented a mountain with rocks and adventures to spare.  There were fossils all over the rocks and in the summer, the small sweet wild blackberries in the meadows around (our) Mount Baker as well as sleeping deer and their babies which we'd awake on our early morning adventures.  We took it all for granted, it was part of our daily world.

I recall going up to Mount Baker and then heading South across the rise of trails that gave me a view of Bellingham Bay on one side and as far as my eye could travel, Fir Trees, on the other.  I knew the trails and which one to take.  My journey would eventually take me back hours later to the Rain Fort.  It was a sight to behold, even for a seven year old.

The Fir Trees were there for shade in the summer and protection in the winter.  But they were also there to climb.  We climbed them without any thought of consequence, the Osborn Boys and my little brother in their own trees next to the one I was in.  We'd each chose a tree, climb to the very top, a distance that put us way above the world.  With the wind rocking us back and forth, we'd sit up there for hours. 

I still picture looking over at my brother and the Osborn boys, all of us swaying on the top of our Fir Trees.  Some inclination told us that when we came upon the new growth on the very tops of these tall trees, it was the place to stop climbing.  We never discussed this decision, it came naturally to all of us.

Should one of us have fallen, it would have ended our childhood lives.  But never did we slip or lose our grip.  We came home each evening covered in fragrant pitch, to be stuck in the tub, eat our dinner, go to sleep, get up and do it all over again.  I'm sure our Moms knew we climbed trees but I'm not sure they realized how high we went.

I lived this wonderful adventure for the first eight years of my life.  But when I turned nine changes came.  The Osborn Boys left us, relocating to Boise, Idaho.  Running the woods wasn't such fun without them to share the day.  At age ten I was now interested in hanging out with my best friends and by age eleven I was madly in love with Herman of Herman's Hermits.

As I've learned through life, when you live in a beautiful place long enough, you start to take it for granted.  That's what my brother and I did with the woods.  They were there across the road from our house but as we got older, they became plain old woods.  The secrets of the trails and adventures we'd had were left behind.

When I turned twelve my family moved to the outskirts of North Seattle.  This wasn't a move any of us in the family were happy about.  Bellingham was our home, it was where our family and friends lived and none of us wanted to go.  But work called my Dad to Seattle so move we did, with an enticement from our parents that our new home had "woods".

Once were relocated and unpacked, my brother and I ventured out to explore our new woods.  What we found was a smelly swampy area with a few cottonwood trees.  Nothing one could climb up into and sit in for hours, swaying with the wind.  No rocks with a view of Mount Baker, no sweet small blackberries for when we were hungry. 

You could hear the sound of traffic in the distance but what really hit us was the definite beginning and ending to these "woods".  As quickly as we came into them, we could see neighbor houses in the distance.  This realization left us both with heavy hearts.  These weren't "woods"!  We missed our former woods, the woods we'd taken for granted as we grew older, the woods we hadn't even thought of saying farewell to before we moved.

As we grew up we returned when we could to our old home to find the woods we ran in were no longer there, replaced by new roads and houses.  Our Mount Baker, developed into a huge estate, hosting a private property sign, with a closed gate which kept out "visitors"' like my brother and I, who knew the woods for what they'd been, not what they now were.  Our woods were gone, just like our childhood.  All we had left were the memories.

A few years ago I lost my little brother to Leukemia.  During his last days with us we were visited by our old friends, the Osborn Boys.  One of the things we talked about was the woods.  I know it meant as much to my brother as it did to me to find that they, like us, had never forgotten those woods and the wonderful world it provided us.  Even though they'd moved to Boise, Idaho, one of the biggest things they said they had missed were the woods.  Talking with them, we could feel ourselves once again jogging on those trails and swaying on the tops of the trees.

The woods taught us to never take for granted the beauty of what you have in front of you.  It taught us respect the way we found it and do our best to leave it that way when we leave.  And most of all, it taught us to stop and say goodbye if you must leave. 

We who ran the woods and swayed in tall trees will always remember this.  We'll carry it in our hearts until, like the woods, we're no longer here.