July 17, 2006

• Hobo Hikes

  
  

   

  
  

  I was born in 1950, and when I was eight my family of five moved to a house on the west side.  What used to be woods is now developed but I had the luxury of growing up at a time, in a place, where secret forts and a secret life were the domain no parent was privy to.

  
  

  Being outdoors wasn’t something that happened when your mother turned off the TV and said, “Go play outside,” it was where we belonged.  My best friend lived across the street but besides us it was all boys.  We didn’t play with dolls, we played war.  The boys favored tree forts but ours was underground, and we learned to strategize at a young age.  We learned what you could eat and what would sting or make you itch. 

  
  

  Suzanne called them “hobo hikes.”  We’d wrap up food in a bandana and tie that to the end of a stick.  Up the street  – There were no blocks — past the few houses that had been built, we’d found a trail the summer before.  It led to the same stream which ran behind my house.  In late spring it was more like a lake, and we rigged up a raft, the hobo stick and bandana being our mast.  I can still remember that sunny day in May when the warm ground gave off that green smell.

  
  

  After the school year was over, and we didn’t have to get up in the mornings, we’d sneak out at night with our secret stash of food.  We’d go the other direction, though, where she lives now.  It would be midnight and we’d be sauntering down the middle of the road, two hobos in the moonlight.  Technically it wasn’t sneaking out, as we were already out, having set up the tent in her backyard.  We knew the trails by heart, barefoot in the dark, braving the slugs. 

  
  

  Once we started babysitting and had cash, we’d ride our bikes as far as the footbridge, stash them in the bushes, and walk the rest of the way into the next town over.  The rule was that we could ride as far as the college.  Nobody ever said anything about walking; our parents never dreamed we’d walk that far. 

  
  

  Last weekend the three boys who’d lived next door called from my brother’s cell phone.  He’d been over at my mothers, cutting the grass, and run into them at the gas station.  They were working on their parent’s new home, down by the river where I used to ride my bike to Julie’s.    The middle one was in that gang I played war with, the one who had the tree fort.  I call them boys because, standing there listening to them bicker while they cut back the ivy, it felt like we were kids.  It was a different backyard but it felt the same.  When I left I tried to find Julie’s hous but the land was unrecognizable.   I marveled at how far I walked home those nights I got off at her bus stop and ended up staying for dinner.  In those days parents didn’t drive kids all around.

  
  

  My kids are lucky because they grew up with a beach house surrounded by woods.  They know what it’s like to spend all day outside, down at the ocean with the dog by their side.  But I always had to be able to call them or be able to see them from the dunes.  When I venture into the woods with my dog now and feel as comfortable as if I were in my backyard, I am grateful for having grown up in a time and place where it was allowed.  Connection with the earth, I fear, is vanishing.

  
  

  © 2005 pd Brown 

  
  

  This was for Featured Grown-up.

  • 5:44 pm
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