building the fort

I remember my first "boys fort"...
While I seem to have forgotten major portions of my life, I remember with great fondness that special place and time.

There were many "boys forts" in Virginia where I found myself as a 10 year old.
Totally dialed-in Treeforts and clubhouses could be seen on afternoon installments of Mickey Mouse Club.  I noticeably remember never being late for an episode of my personal favorite "The Adventures of Spin and Marty". 

Lately, I had found myself wanting to withdraw, wanting to hide, wanting a place to escape to.

...a place to get away from my daily world 
...a place to feel safe and secretive
...a place to hang out and read the Hardy Boys (okay, mostly Nancy Drew, but peppered with the occasional boy detectives for a certain butch factor that even I understood at age ten).

Norfolk, Virginia, summer of 1960

...hot and sticky
...really really hot and sticky.  Sometimes when you got up in the morning you spent the rest of the day looking for the next place to just lie down and cool off.  A 100 year old pecan tree at the back of our yard....a huge thicket of overgrown bushes and undergrowth entwined with wild honeysuckle wrapping around the huge trunk and then traveling for many yards until ensnarling the next old tree in its grasp.  The humid air thick with the scent of  honeysuckle.

Nooks and crannies in the wild shrubs became my private warren.  Leaning up against the trunk of the pecan, which was now a defining "wall" in the architecture of my fort, trying to be completely still except for breathing, I would survey all that my hands and sweat had wrought.

A hidden box of boy treasures, long forgotten except for memories of opening it for display of the valuable and precious things in my small life.
An old rug stolen from mom's laundry...most likely chenille from the bathroom.
A mason jar with holes punched in the top for catching fireflies at dusk to light up my personal night.
A small stack of books having been read or waiting to dive into.
Nothing for the outside world to detect of the master in his domain.

Portland, Oregon, summer of 2010

warm afternoons with light breezes.
I spend my days looking for any reason to be out back in my grown-up "boys fort".
I prefer it to a day at the beach.
Constructed of cast-off doors, windows and window shutters, it sports a garage door from a friend and a 7 foot tall door from a distant barn of questionable pedigree.  A monster chandelier hangs over the space...electrically dis-emboweled long ago, daydreaming of it's finer days.

...a place to get away from my daily world
...a place to feel safe and secretive
...a place to hang out and read mostly design magazines peppered with the occasional Vanity Fair.

I now have a life, a house, and a heart, all filled with my treasures.


Rolfe