I grew up on a short street named Lamoille Street, in a small rural town where there was lots of wilderness nearby. It wasn’t that there were wilderness protection areas surrounding our town, the developers just hadn’t gotten to it yet. They did eventually, but in the meantime, it was a giant unplanned, unspoiled playground for town kids, especially the kids on my street, which abutted the wilderness. The wilderness was huge, at least by kid standards, but we didn’t need a map to find or explore it, not that we could have read a map if one existed. We all just knew the wilderness by heart, and besides, if you ever got lost (I did once, but that’s another story), the old B&L Railroad track, which dissected the playground in its entirety, ran directly past the end of Lamoille Street. Lost? Just find the tracks (never difficult, always up if below and down if above) and follow them home.
Favorite spots in our playground included Red Rock (not really red, named for its appearance when sunsets were reflected in the abundant quartz embedded in the stone). It was a place for exploring and discovering (over and over) ancient trails that led to hidden tree-lined glens with little streams containing an abundance of tiny fish. It was a place for mountain climbing (if 20 feet or so qualifies as mountain climbing) and then basking in the afternoon sun with your shirts off. It was a place to bring your girlfriend, your very first, to be impressed by the solitude and the beauty and the impressive view, and bask in the sun with your shirts off (or not).
The Clay Pit (really full of clay and owned by the Drury Brick Company) was another favorite. Definitely not for girls (unless your were Betty Densmore, who was pretty enough, but really a boy in disguise), the favorite pastime was “running the quicksand.” Not sand at all, but deep clay pockets made really soupy by recent rains, they swallowed you up like the quicksand you saw in the movies. The idea was to get running as fast as you could in the hopes that momentum would carry you through the pocket before you disappeared beneath the surface. It usually worked, and except for Denny Daniels (who was really short), we never lost a single kid. We didn’t actually lose Denny, but thought we had when he momentarily dropped out of sight. He popped back up, however, and we pulled him out, none the worse for wear. He did look more a clay sculpture of a Denny than a real Denny, but the clay eventually dried and fell off, to our great disappointment.
The Sand Pit (really sand and also owned by the Drury Brick Company) was our favorite favorite. Here was where we developed our mountain climbing skills. Shear sand walls soared upwards to heights approaching 30 feet (probably less, but it seemed like 30 feet) and being sand meant you could cut hand-holds and foot-holds into the sheer walls. Of course, the sand seldom held your weight and I don’t recall anyone every making it to the top, but the loose sand piled at the bottom of the wall made for soft landings and minimal injury. Sand is a wonderful substance (I suppose that would explain the popularity of sandboxes) and the endless piles of sand made for all sorts of clean fun. No matter how much sand got into your clothes, you could take them off, shake them out, and be clean again. An added bonus was the joy of running naked through the sand piles. For some reason, we could never get Betty Densmore to share in that joy.
12/29/10
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