October 19 “nature boy” in Scott

When I was a child and young man, I grew up in a house in the neighborhood just outside the city of Ann Arbor, Michigan. Because it was the suburbs there was fading farmland, as I think of it. Abandoned farmland sold to developers. Or something like that. There was an area of big fields stretching on and on it seemed. There was a pond and a creek and a small woods. It was where I went to dream. It was where I went to heal. I love that place. I loved playing in the creek, building little dams, and what the kids would call forts. The foolish little structures built up in the branches of trees. The building was the fun part and nobody ever seemed to spend any time in the structures we built. I think the closest to an archaeologist I ever felt was finding remnants of things other kids had made decades before me. I learned much about nature and I tried to preserve what was there. I look back and wonder at how I tried to foolishly, save that area from the developers. I tried to save it from the winter man on the snowmobiles. For a time I tried to say that area from the motor across stuff of what was supposedly my best friend. It was a place where my father was not yelling at me. Only when I got home. Nothing sexual ever happened there no great losing of cherries. Just walking a lot in nature. One winter I fell through the pond ice and I have no idea how I ever got back to the surface of the ice.

Remembering the things I did and did alone. I have wondered if I was stupid or just idealistic. To save the fields from the ravages of snowmobiles in the winter time I set little traps that made the snowmobiling an inconvenience. There was a time when my friend was ravaging the area on his motorcycle, and I dug little obstacles for him, and I think it was only luck that he was never hurt. As an adult, I have felt conflicted about what I did. About my idealism, my desire to save that natural area. The end of my roaming of that area came when the area was sold for development and as happens survey markers started to appear. It was at that time I would often walk one of the family dogs there. I was once accused by some surveyors of damaging the stakes they had posted for construction. Of course I did proclaim my innocence, but after that no survey sticks went missing. It was of course pure coincidence. Soon after that adult things happened to me since I had graduated from high school and I needed to get a job and eventually after a couple years I moved out of my parents house and into an apartment. I sometimes dream of that area. I wonder about it then have to turn my mind away from that. I often think of places as old lovers because of the affection I have had for them. I felt I was a protector of that area. That I was doing something noble, and trying to save it. The development into apartments of that area was childhood’s end for me. Reality kicking my ass into adulthood.

One of my best memories was of seeing a naked man while walking my dog. The dog told me he was coming towards us, and I was shocked to see this middle-aged man walking along with a bundle of clothes covering up his genital area. He greeted me in a friendly fashion and turned away from me. He turned away from an area of the creek, where children were playing. I ran down to the creek and I screamed at the kids or yelled at them to go home and tell their parents about the man that was naked. I remember them acting like it was funny because of the strange man with a dang thing out, but I told them to go home. Tell their parents and call the police. I saw the man a few more times and the dog always snarled at him. You don’t want to encounter a dog with your bits hanging out. A few years. My mother told me that she had read a newspaper story about a man arrested for walking around in that area, naked. Something about child molesting or trying to. He went to trial and he was convicted and went to prison. At times I thought about that man and the kids playing and I felt good that on those days I had been walking the dog.

I think it was when I was in my grade school years or perhaps middle school. There was a big old dead tree near the creek. It always fascinated me because it was so huge and weathered. It had an opening in the base and I could see that many animals Had used it for years for decades. One night there was a big fire by the creek with the fire department, trying to control it, and it was that big tree burning. It was like a flaming hand reaching for the night sky. It was horrifying to me because I knew there was life inside that tree. There were birds and animals using it as a home. I was crying. I was so traumatized by an old dead tree burning. I found out later that two friends of mine had lit a fire for the hell of it at the base of the tree and gosh they just couldn’t get it out so they let it burn of course, and found it very funny.

The creek had two branches, one of which was a creek that flowed from a huge concrete and brick tunnel. It was large enough where you could drive a car through it, but I would not suggest trying because it was filled with muck. My friends and I would stand above the entrance to it and light off firecrackers and listen to the echoes. In the summertime we would walk into it through it, sometimes seeing eyes lighting up from our flashlights. We store lumber and building materials using that huge tunnel and tunnels of branching into it. I’m still proud of what we did. There was construction going on for apartments about a half mile from my house. At night, we would go to the construction sites and take what lumber we wanted; what boxes of nails. One of my friends at that time had some land near the creek and we dug a pit and built what was something like an underground shed. It was going to be a clubhouse, but we got busted by that kid mother wondering about all the noise back there. The the developer was contacted as well as all our parents. An estimate made of what we had stolen. All five of us had to break our piggy banks and saving accounts and pay up. My father did much yelling at me which he was very good at. I think he enjoyed it because he was some kind of great release for him to stand with a cigarette in hand or mouth and yell at me about the stupid things I did and had done. I learned later that my best friend at that time his father looked at it realistically as quite an endeavor by five. I think we were 14 year olds. It was to me a great adventure that no yelling by my father could erase.

Writing this helps me see that I was just a kid doing kid things. There was a nobility in my trying to save a natural area all by myself. If my father had known half the things I had done to try to stop the developers or slow them down I think he might’ve killed me. Maybe it would’ve been death by yelling at me and punching me. My idealism felt noble and no matter what crimes of stupidity I committed I look back and think hey kid nice effort. At least you tried. In a way I felt some empathy for the indigenous people of the USA. Those damn settlers coming in and taking over the land. It was the best part of my childhood.