The Hill Man’s Blogspot

Welcome to the Jungle

My neighbor, Alex, has an especially large backyard. The yard extends into the outskirts of a nature-hiking walk area. The actual path for the nature-hike walk is located deep within the overgrowth of nature. My older brother Tim and I noticed that the area looked similar to a jungle which naturally excited us. We started inviting ourselves over to Alex’s house and sometimes didn’t even invite Alex with us to play in the jungle. There was a long stream that surrounded the jungle where we would attempt to catch frogs and fish. For a while, we never ventured past the creek because the jungle was protected by a steep wall of dirt that my brother and I were afraid to climb it.

Eventually, curiosity of what animals might lay in the jungle caught the best of us so my brother forced me to climb the steep wall. My daring efforts and his bullying skills paid off for the jungle was better than we had dreamed. We would invite our friends over and travel to the jungle to create pathetic forts made of fallen logs and branches, play hide and seek, pretend we were explorers, etc. During the spring, summer and winter, we would attempt to venture out into the jungle during any weather conditions. We would especially enjoy playing “war” with our cap guns and one time, one of Alex’s neighbors called the police because he/she thought we were using real guns.

During the winter, the creek would freeze allowing us to make our own bowling alley on the ice using random items as pins and a pumpkin (which mysteriously appeared in the snow one day) as a bowling ball. My brother, our friends and I would also have a blast tackling each other in the snow and wrestling with less of a chance to obtain injuries.

One night, a huge rain storm hit Upper Dublin which made the jungle very muddy. The mud didn’t stop my brother and me from going to the jungle the next day; we put on old shoes and ventured on like we usually do. I remember walking on the edge of the jungle, where the creek met the steep wall of dirt (now mud of course) and looking down at a very large tree that had fallen over during the rainy and windy storm. Suddenly, the mud beneath my feet gave way and I fell down the cliff and landed where the roots of the fallen tree used to lie. The roots of the fallen tree had dug far into the ground, so when the tree collapsed, a small cave formed.

This discovery of the cave, although frightening at first, was very exciting. My brother and I turned it into a fortress which was always a strong desire and spent many days playing in or around the fort. We created balls of mud which we enjoyed throwing at innocent bystanders and it was a popular hiding spot for a cap-gun war or hide and seek.

Nowadays, I sometimes walk by Alex’s house and remember all of the fun times I had; most of them oddly didn’t include Alex…

Filed by Mr. Hillman at March 28th, 2008 under I eat paste and other childhood reflections