Every Backyard is an Adventure: The Wilderness Fort

We started by creating a perimeter of briars in the middle of the woods. We dragged sticker bushes from all over the area into our small fortress area. We encircled a twenty-foot perimeter with sticker bushes arranged like concertina wire. After a few days of this difficult work, we were scratched and bloodied. But, we weren�t satisfied yet. We figured that they could easily crawl under the briars or cut them away with clippers (yes, we thought people would crawl under them). So we gathered a bunch of old beer bottles that had been left in an abandoned fire-ring near the construction sites � no doubt the site of drunken construction-worker binges. We took the beer bottles and shattered them all around the perimeter of the fortress. We intermingled the broken bottles in through the sticker bushes and all over the ground. We left a narrow path through the sharp, prickly carnage where we could barely crawl into the fortress. A fox would have had a difficult time following this little wildlife trail.

Our defensive preparations were going well. We rested for a few days while we worked on the observation platform that was suspended by sisal twine fifteen-feet up in the trees (it was actually probably seven feet, but boys will always exaggerate lengths). The platform consisted of a few sticks lashed to three tree trunks making a triangular stand without a platform to sit on. We sat or stood on the sticks while we yelled obscenities at AJ who was trying to break through our perimeter.

One day, AJ finally got through the perimeter. We reasoned that if AJ could get in, the construction workers certainly could. So we set out to improve the perimeter. This time we got axes and bow saws. We cut down large pine trees so that when they fell, their branches overlapped each other making a thick impenetrable wall that was hiding briars and broken beer bottles. It was indeed an imposing obstacle for any intruder. AJ gave up trying to play with us when we retreated to the fort since he was unable to manage the hand-over-hand jungle gym like maneuver required to get over the fallen trees and onto the platform. Eventually like all early forts, it was abandoned to the elements. The construction never did extend to the fortress; we turned back the intruders, although eventually we could see the house from our observation platform. Our need for a wilderness fortress was over.

How do Children become so xenophobic?