The Little Black Book:
I was 10 years old when the tramp came running through the forest. Older fella, he was, in good in shape, panting, dirty, missing a few teeth. I think I scared him as much as he scared me. We were up in the back quarry, not the running one, but the old one that had been turned into a park with trails up front. We were high on the south ridge where the rock had turned to brush and then imperceptibly turned into an aspen grove with coniferous trees splattered throughout. Up here, this abandoned part, I liked to call my own – nothing but mismatched fox and deer trails. I played up there, making forts out of sticks. Not the fancy treehouse forts built by rich Dads in the movies or the kind you find bought at Home Hardware in the suburbs but a real kid’s fort, with longer sticks leaning teepee style against a larger tree’s trunk in the middle, moss and leaves and boughs matted on top, mud in the cracks.
