By David Smith
June 17, 2024
Greetings from the meanderer,
When I was a kid, it was a common thing to build a ‘fort’. We made them out of sheets, out of pillows, couch cushions, cardboard boxes. When we were told to go outside, for God’s sake and don’t come back until I call you for dinner, we made forts out in the world. Sometimes just hunkering under the low boughs of the pine tree, sometimes by creating elaborate structures in the woods. Branches and leaves and rocks and grass and scrap wood, and perhaps the occasional purloined sheet. Not confessing anything here.
We would even call it ‘playing forts’. I think the name was originally because we were cowboys or army men, but later the militant aspect fell away and were just playing. The little structures we built in the woods along Gilkey Creek lasted for weeks, often added to by other kids we never saw. We would show up and bring our comic books or Matchbox cars and sit on stolen milk crates in our little lean-to or teepee or grass hut, and while away the afternoon.
It was also some harbor against the weather. Between the leaves of the trees above and the meager efforts at creating a roof, my friends and I stayed dry enough in light rain to resist going home.
With no research to support this thought, I suspect this is a universal experience. In fact, I still go into the woods and find these crude structures, clearly built by little kids who only have rudimentary resources. I recognize the architectural details, the bits of things they collected, usually on trash day at the curb, treasures to be saved at the fort. A wheel, an old end table, a soggy cardboard box.
These images came to me from an odd trajectory. I have been shopping for a one-person tent for a hiking adventure, which is taking way too long, in part because I am paralyzed by the vast choices, and the desire to pinch this last penny. But it’s still fun, just the idea of sleeping out in a tent makes me a little silly.
This thought came to me: what else is a tent but a prefabricated fort? Ripstop, 75 denier, built in fly, micromesh, grommeted and sealed seam, easy to assemble, fort. Dang, I’m still eight years old. I have slept in a small tent for hundreds of nights, admittedly decades ago, and still it feels like something that is integral to me. Some basic, primal thing.
The eight-year-old boy in me feels the first place of independence, the space away from parental eyes and discipline. A place to keep stuff, to go to, to be with who you invite, or to be alone. A place that can be any place, in fact, but it is yours.
My grown-up experience is an echo of that, and more. It is a home, an intimate, simple shelter with very few demands. It is a home away from. There is nothing like being inside a tent at night, when you turn on your flashlight to read, and you are surrounded by the sound of the forest. You hear the vibration of the insects who hover outside the screen, soft moan of the trees rubbing against each other, the frogs, the crickets. Falling asleep with the breeze through the screen. And there is nothing in life like the sound of rain falling on your tent in the night. You are safe and dry and cozy in your own sanctuary. The best sleep of my life is in those nights.
All of this was on my mind as I began my day. The thunder was actually what woke me, insisted I get up, which I admit I resisted for a while. But nature is nothing if not persistent, and I obliged, muttering as creaked down the stairs.
I stood outside in the dark on my deck with my first cup of coffee and then the sky lit up with a storm off to the west. It was spectacular. The clouds glowed with the chaos in them, calling and answering in some celestial prayer chant. The growl in the sky was deep and resonant, and when the sky was dark, felt ominous. And then the lightning flew across the horizon, like white spears cast by playful gods. I stood there watching the storm come across the sky until the rain suggested I’d seen enough.
I wasn’t thinking about tents, but the relationship was there. The storm and the dark and the urge to be in shelter, but not separate from the natural living that was coming at me. I turned to go inside when I glanced out into the yard.
In the half-light, I could see in the yard a pile of scrap lumber and some branches left over from yesterday’s yard work. And I thought: “That could make a cool fort.”
Hope this finds you making your own,
David
Copyright © 2024 David Smith
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