The last bell of the day rings and I meet my first-grade sweetheart, Charlie, on the playground at the back of the school. Together we walk to the treeline at the edge of campus and duck under the layers of oak, white willow and blackberry brambles.
He’s the one who showed me this secret path; it’s the quickest way to get from school to his house, which is just down the hill from mine. We pick our way along the creek, the canopy of leaves and thorns close over our heads. Sometimes we hold hands, other times we walk a few paces apart, stepping over wet stones and slippery mud. In warm weather, flies and mosquitoes buzz past us, while water-striders flick across the surface of the creek. The air is thick with moisture and the scent of crushed leaves, or decaying vegetation and ripe blackberries on hot days.
It’s slow going, walking along the narrow banks of the creek when it’s full from a recent rain, dodging blackberry thorns and sharp twigs that jut into our path. Part of me dreads emerging on the other side, re-entering the world of sunlight, grownups and speeding cars. Sometimes we linger, watching some rare insect or collecting pebbles. But it’s not a long path, and it always ends too soon. Charlie steps out first, reaching a hand back to help me jump across the ditch that separates the woods from the road. We say our goodbyes and I turn to walk uphill toward home, while he heads in the other direction.
My romance with Charlie didn’t last (what first-grade romance does?), and I switched to walking home along the local roads with friends, sometimes stopping for a soft-serve ice cream cone on the way. But once in a while, I returned to the creek path. It was poorly maintained, and many times it was impassable, blocked by blackberry vines or fallen tree limbs. When it wouldn’t let me in, my heart broke a little.
Sometimes I’d go months without visiting, and then would walk down the hill one weekend afternoon to enter the woods from the other side, which was sometimes more accessible. I’d sit by the creek for hours, watching water-striders and tiny fish dart around, sending ripples across the clear surface of the water. In spring, frogs would lay eggs in the swollen creek and I would collect tadpoles in a jar, bring them home, and feed them until their tails shrunk and their legs sprouted before returning them to the their birthplace.
As I grew bigger, I stopped going. The arboreal tunnel was too low for most teenagers and adults to walk comfortably; they’d have to crouch, or crawl. In a way, it was a place just for kids, a place to be ourselves, where the grownup world couldn’t reach us.
On Google maps, it looks like the woods are still there but the pathway is gone; the trees have fallen in and closed the way through. (See the photo at the top.) I trust that the water still flows there, at least in the wetter months. That place belongs to the frogs, water-striders and blackberries, now.