There was a small strip of waste land running along a leech-infested drainage ditch behind my childhood home. A few stunted trees, a maze of dank slippery paths that led nowhere but into dense, painful bramble.

It was Sherwood Forest, Darkest Africa, The Ardennes, Dan'l Boone's Dark and Bloody Ground.

Mad bull elephants were commonly heard snuffling, trumpeting, scuffing and stamping the dirt. Nazi troops were everywhere. Eager heroism breathed in every shadow. Keep your hand on your Bowie knife.

I went back once, years, decades later. I couldn't stoop low enough to enter the prickly tunnel into the bramble patch. And who was I to desecrate that simple place? Let Tarzan's bones lie undisturbed, mouldering under the leaf litter.

10/2/2021