Building Forts in the Woods

Last weekend when Russ and I went into the woods behind the house to try to propagate chanterelle mushroom spores, we walked the trails near the fort that the boys built back in the woods.  Many Air Soft wars were waged on those trails, behind fortified barriers and up in trees.  Did you build forts as a youngster?

Here is the checkpoint at the fort.  There is a fortified wall of sticks that one can hide behind as people are identified as friend or foe.  Everything is camouflaged and if you didn't know it was there, you'd walk right by it.  The trees and undergrowth of the woods shield a lot of the sunlight and block out much of civilization, allowing boys to be boys and vast adventures to be lived without intrusion from reality.

Checkpoint Charlie

Most of the adventures are military in nature and require foxholes to be dug.  The problem with foxholes in South Louisiana is that they fill up with water and become havens for mosquitoes and other critters.  Back in the woods, it is easy to imagine that you are far away from civilization and your imagination can run wild, enabling young boys to have adventures.  Occupants of the foxhole must have a bail out bucket to drain the foxholes to fend off malaria and/or jungle rot.

The woods are in a low lying area, thick with chicken trees (Chinese tallow), Chinaberry, willow and live oak trees.  The ground is soft and easy to dig.  In fact, quite a few booby traps have been dug in the woods, consisting of holes with a skeleton of small sticks covered with leaves that you might fall in if you are not careful.  Don't worry, punji sticks were not allowed.

The Muddy Foxhole

When we built the barn, we had some leftover lumber and tin that was appropriated by the boys to build the main fort.  The fort has fallen into disrepair over the years, but its greatness is still evident.  Troops could fan out throughout the woods and if the adversary was too strong and the fighting became too intense, the soldiers could fall back to the safety of the main fort and defend their position from all sides. 

Fort Sonnier

From as young as I can remember, we always had forts.  Throughout my entire childhood, I don't think a week went by that we didn't have some sort of a fort.  It started out indoors with a structure built with bedsheets and sofa cushions.  You learned quickly that bedsheets work better than blankets because they are lighter and blankets require heavier weights to anchor the ends on top of tables, recliners or coffee tables. One could retreat into the bed sheet fort in your pajamas and the den wasn't a den anymore - it was the last outpost on the frontier.

As we got older, our forts became more elaborate.  We had a fort that we called the Hole Camp.  It was appropriately named because it was a four foot deep hole we dug in the ground that was about eight feet in diameter.  (A lot of work went into building these forts!)  It had a working fireplace with a mud chimney. The most awesome amenity of this fort was a cave that we dug into the walls.  This was in the piney woods and the soil was heavy red clay.  That enabled us to dig an eight foot cave into the side of the hole camp that we could completely crawl into.  All the dirt from the hole camp and its cave was used to make a big levee around the camp for a barrier or wall of protection that made the hole seem even deeper than it actually was.

Although it was dark in the cave, we determined that we could light the pine sap that appeared on the roots from the pine trees that we encountered while digging and those acted as torches that emitted light and lots of black smoke.  If I close my eyes right now (and it has been at least 35 years ago), I can still feel the coolness of the red clay and smell the mustiness of the cave coupled with the smell of the burning pine sap and I'm 10 years old again living an adventure.  Wow. What good memories of a great childhood! 

Why did we do it?  Why build forts?  It was a lot of work and took a lot of time.  As I see it, it was about adventure and fun and just enjoying being outdoors.  We used our imagination to construct elaborate plots in which we were soldiers in the European theatre or the Civil or Revolutionary War, we were pirates, frontiersmen, survivalists, cowboys, gold miners, or cavalrymen.  We had many wars in which we shot at each other with make believe bullets or threw pine cones that hadn't opened up yet at each other.  Man, those hurt when they hit you!

In addition to allowing us to exercise our active imaginations, building forts also taught us planning as we had to carry our building materials into the woods and determine how we were going to build the fort.  It taught us safety as we learned to be careful and that you could easily get hurt out in the wilderness.  We learned some of that through experience.  We learned to have a good work ethic as building forts is serious business and hard work.  It taught us to delegate authority as each one of us had a job to do in working to complete the task, although parenthetically, my brother would often disappear after going to 'get water' and not return for hours.  We learned through trial and error, construction techniques.  Some things require bracing, more nails, heavier logs, etc.

But most of all building forts allowed us to have fun, entertaining ourselves and building memories that I still carry with me today.  Anyone wanna go build a fort?