Just a Little Rambling
Do you remember being eight? Nine, maybe 10? Of course you do. At least I do. I always look back at my childhood as halcyon days - days of tossing pebbles in the neighbor's driveway, endless hours of baseball, the smell of grass and the sting of the snow on my face while sledding down the little hill at the college pond. Yeah, those were the days.
The Trail at 812
Way back before we had a driveway and garage at 812 - The Home, we had a couple pine trees and, along the back of the back yard, there was a row of various bushes. This row of forsythia (and probably another kind of bush or two) spanned across our property and the back of our neighbor's yard. The forsythia had grown long enough that it bent over forming a natural tunnel broken by bare spots that made up a neat little trail. There was even a little fence, maybe three feet high, that you had to climb to continue along the trail. This red line shows the approximate length and breadth of what all of us goofy kids on that block called the Indian Trail...
I wish we had pictures of that strip of bushes, weed trees, etc. It probably wasn't as cool as I recall, but I in my minds' eye, I saw the trail as something like this...
When in reality, the trail probably looked something more along the line of this:
Either way, we each had to graduate through the different phases of the trail. First you had to brave actually going into the bushes. After growing indifferent to the spiders and rolie-polies in the dirt, you had to learn to clamber over that little fence that was all twisted up with weeds.
From there it was more bush tunnels, the droppings of an old pear tree and so on. Funny, I don't remember exactly where the trail ended. But I do remember this - it was a blast playing in that old back yard, and a rite of passage to traverse the length of that long-removed trail.
So, What's the Point?
The point is - all the fences here at 173 are being replaced after about 20 years, and as I took out one section on the north side of the house, I came across this little gap...
It doesn't look like much from the back side with the fence missing, but when you look at it from the other side:
Do you see it? it's like a little cave there in the back of the shade garden, under the bush and up against the fence. It's this spot that got me to reminiscing about the old trail at 812 some half century ago! It's one of those moments where you can't help but get a little nostalgic.
The Side Garden
Along the street side of the house grows a stand of lilac bushes and a bunch of other flowers and bushes. Some twenty years ago, when I built that fence and put in the lilacs...
I envisioned the lilac bushes creating a bit of a tunnel in conjunction with the fence. I knew it would take time, but it didn't take as long I thought before 173 had it's own tunnel. Two generations of beagles, Bruegger and Linus, found this to be among their favorite spots:
Childhood memories were like airplane luggage; no matter how far you were traveling or how long you needed them to last, you were only ever allowed two bags. And while those bags might hold a few hazy recollections—a diner with a jukebox at the table, being pushed on a swing set, the way it felt to be picked up and spun around—it didn’t seem enough to last a whole lifetime. ― Jennifer E. Smith, This Is What Happy Looks Like
A little wider shot shows the beauty of this part of the yard...
The Front Porch Trail
One last little "trail"...Back in the Mosher's days, there were yews in front of the porch...
But over the years the landscaping has changed and now the front of the house looks like this...
That row of bushes make for a beautiful little trail across the front of the porch!
That's pretty much it. I mean really - they're really not much, as a matter of fact, they're just the back side of the bushes. But isn't it fun to sometimes look around at the little things that hearken back to those innocent days of your youth? It is for me. And every once in awhile, while walking beneath the lilacs, or finding myself cleaning up in front of the porch, I think back to the old Indian trail at 812 and have that brief moment...
Happy Trails!
