The next summer Fin took me and my dad on a guided tour of the trail system surrounding our house. After which, he agreed to let me hike in the woods as long as I was with Fin and we didn’t go past the creek at the two, mile marker. We spent nearly every day in the woods building our secret fort, overlooking the creek. We decided it was the perfect spot, because there was a break in the forest canopy, above a small bluff. The sun came through in ethereal rays that made the spot seem magical. We made walls with sticks we gathered and chairs out of logs we had to roll through the woods because they were too big to carry. We even found an old tarp in my garage, that we used for a roof. Fin and I were both experts at tadpole catching, the floor of our fort was lined with old bowls and mason jars filled with tadpoles in various stages of metamorphosis. My dad made his way out to our secret fort one afternoon. We reluctantly let him have a look around. He had a huge grin when he, said he was going to have to start calling us the frog prince and princess. I rolled my eyes while Fin muttered under his breath, “That is why grownups are not allowed in secret forts.” Our fort was our pride and joy, until hurricane Fiona came that September and destroyed every last bit of it. We never did find the tarp. I was completely devastated. Fin remained unshaken in the face of what I considered to be a monumental catastrophe. I will always remember his serious eyes looking into mine as he grabbed my hands and said, “There will always be storms, Haven, but we get choose whether we let them destroy us or help us to come back stronger.” I stared at him in awe, as I whispered, “Let’s come back stronger.” He grinned at me, and we started clearing away the debris from our perfect spot.
First thing that Saturday morning, Fin was at the door with a huge smile. We ran upstairs to my room, and he excitedly pulled something from his pocket. It looked like a wrinkled, green, grapefruit. I reached to touch its bumpy skin as he held it out for me.
“What is it?”
“This is how we are going to build an indestructible fort. It’s the fruit from a Bodock tree.”
“What kind of tree?”
“Bo-dock” He said more slowly, though still in his slight country boy twang.
“How are we going to build our fort with this?”
He tossed the fruit in the air and caught it with his right hand. “It’s a two, part plan. First, I’m going get us some wood from the Bodock trees down by the lake. We can build a small temporary fort with the wood I get. But this little piece of fruit from the tree, it probably has a hundred seeds in it. So, for the second part of the plan, we are going to plant the seeds, and they will grow into a living fort that will be bigger, and last longer than our lifetime.”
“I want to go with you to get the wood.”
“You can’t, it is way past the two, mile marker. There is no way your dad’s gonna let you go all the way out to the lake.”
“Well then let's use a different kind of wood for the temporary shelter. That way I can help.”
“No, Bodock is the best, we need to use it trust me.”
“Why…what’s so great about it?”
“It’s super strong, and the little pieces are very flexible. Also, it doesn’t rot, and the bugs won’t eat it. Some people say it even keeps the bugs away.” Fin, said the last sentence, knowing that would be what won him the argument.
“All right, all right if it keeps the bugs away, I guess that’s what we should use. How long will it take for the permanent shelter to grow in?”
“It should be taller than us in five to seven years, and it will just keep growing from there. Most of them down by the lake are about forty feet tall.”
“Five to seven years! Are we even going to want a fort seven years from now?”
Fin grabbed me by the shoulders and looked me square in the eyes and with the child like faith of peter pan himself, said.
“Haven, it doesn’t matter how old we are. The fort is always gonna be our special place, just like we are always gonna be best friends. Don’t ever forget that.”
So, every Saturday Fin would come to our spot with a load of wood that he had tied to an old, half rusted out dolly. He must have dragged that thing back and forth twenty times through the woods, along the rooted trail. We used the bluff that was about six feet tall as our back wall. Then we made two walls out of the bodock wood. Those came out from the bluff to form a large triangle. For the roof we crisscrossed the smaller more flexible branches of the bodock, then covered it with layers of palmetto fronds. It was the beginning of March when we finally finished our new fort, though we waited until April to plant the bodock seeds. The trees would eventually grow to form the exterior walls that would make our structure permanent.
We probably spent a thousand hours playing at the fort. Our make believe, world was filled with pirates, mutineers, and the occasional damsel in distress. My preferred role was Awilda, the pirate queen. Occasionally I was Lady Anne, “in need of saving.” Fin steadfastly refused to let me save him. Even though I told him he didn’t have be girl. I argued that boys needed to be saved also, and he
