On rocks and childhood fantasies
Revisiting the landscape of my youth
I’ve wanted to write about these memories for a while—and honestly, were I to dive deeper to the details, this essay could become a series. (A thought for the future, perhaps?)
My recollections of times on the rock—and in the yard of my childhood home in general—are like most childhood memories: sweet, yet tinged with the emotional struggles that accompany growing up. I’ve tried to capture the sweetness here.
The rock was a lot of things. A wilderness house, a pirate ship, a secluded spot in a fantasy land...an anchor for imagination. My childhood imagination routinely transformed the gram monolith from a moss-speckled hunk of stone a few feet wide and perhaps eight feet long into anything and everything I wished it to be.
To arrive at the rock's familiar bulky shape, I embarked on an epic journey across the gravel driveway, beneath the spreading branches of a towering pine that kept vigil over my parents' cars, and across a grassy path that carried me past our dilapidated wellhouse with its ill-fitting door and old-fashioned padlock. The aging, gray-green structure marked the boundary between my backyard and the sylvan side lot that bordered the pond beyond my house. Onward led the path, making a sharp right into a narrow space tucked between two bushes and down a mismatched staircase of rocks and tree roots.
As I went, the woodsy landscape began to take the shape of whatever fantastic realm I'd decided to explore that day. A familiar fixture like the stone-ring fireplace where my family occasionally roasted hot dogs for dinner became the source of warmth and sustenance for a family or tribe making their home in the wilderness. And the sloping path just beyond, over which ferns and branches often encroached until my dad clipped them back, might be a path to safety from an enemy—or a place where wild beasts might be waiting, poised to pounce.
At last, I arrived at the rock: solid, sturdy, and unassuming, the perfect setting for whatever story struck my fancy or that of my equally imaginative friends. Passing from reality to fantasy took only a few minutes, yet I—or we—could spend hours populating the area with characters we dreamed up or pulled from the books, movies, and cartoons we enjoyed.
Some friends were much more adventurous than I, like the tough redheaded girl who loved stories that oozed danger and conflict. With her, the rock was a wilderness house that sheltered a rebellious youngster and the mother who could never quite reign her in. As she shimmied up trees and situated herself in the crooks of branches with ease, I trembled a little inside and kept my feet firmly planted on the ground.
When I teamed up with the two sisters I'd met in kindergarten, the imagined family dynamics became more interesting. Together, we slipped into the roles of a mother and two daughters as we wandered between the backyard of my house and the side lot where the rock perched among the trees. At times, fictitious conflicts gave rise to real strife that followed us into the school week and had to be worked out through many notes and tears before we could return to our wilderness playground.
Not every game came purely from our own invention. My best friend at the time, a slim blonde girl whose little brother and sister often played roles in our stories, introduced me to Tales of the Crystals, a commercially produced fantasy game that played a starring role in our adventures for years to come. Set in a fictional world populated by talking trees, fairies, unicorns, wise oracles, and (of course) a wicked witch, the game contained props like plastic crystal pendants that bestowed magic powers, a heart-shaped box for carrying important items, and a set of flags printed with names of specific places in the fantasy world. An audio cassette provided prompts for a series of story arcs culminating in a final confrontation with the villain.
We hung the flags in rooms around our houses or off the branches of trees, donned the crystal necklaces, and transformed ourselves into adventurers with special powers on a quest to complete the tasks set forth by our prerecorded companions. Together, we used our imputed crystal powers to rescue captured unicorns, discover special treasures, and fight formidable foes.
But our longest-running stories were anchored in our idea of what it was like to be part of a Native American tribe. Details from history books, school lessons, and Disney films like Pocahontas collided with a hearty dose of imagination to transform the family dog into a marauding wolf or broad leaves from nearby bushes into talismans representing life and vitality.
Though we had no actual concept of life in those times, our fascination with teepees and longhouses and cooking over fires carried us through story arcs encapsulated in afternoons or carried out over months. Lengthy storylines picked up each time we reconvened at the rock and returned us to a world just as real as the one in which we caught the big yellow bus to school at what felt like the crack of dawn each morning.
School didn't exist in the worlds of the rock. Our struggles were that of a mother wondering how in the world to get her daughter down from her latest tree-bound temper tantrum or a tribal chief and his eldest child preparing to oppose an encroaching enemy. We stepped in and out of these worlds at will, with the rock as our anchor and the trees our witnesses.
The most epic stories were memorialized with the portable Fisher Price tape recorder I carried just about everywhere. Its compact size, chunky handle, and big buttons made it easy to record the antics my friends and I got up to as we played on and around the rock. I purchased scores of blank audio cassettes to capture the dialog and plotlines that flowed from our imaginations—although knowing we were, in essence, performing for an invisible audience consisting of our future selves likely made us ham it up far more than we otherwise would.
Even then, the writer in me couldn't resist pinning our fantasies to the page with words inscribed in the unwieldy cursive taught in third grade. I haven't a clue if my teachers found the results bizarre or inventive, but I delighted in the writing assignments that gave me the opportunity to bring those stories to life.
The times on the rock were pure simplicity, pure fancy, pure childhood. Running around outdoors unhindered, free to allow our imaginations to carry us where they would, my friends and I spent our days in myriad realms with the rock at the center.
Our created worlds radiated from the rock in every direction to encompass the trees, the ferns, the pond, the carpet of leaves and pine needles, and the rural road that ran along the side lot. That was my world: as far as my eyes could see. Compact yet expansive, the view from the rock embraced all that was familiar—and became all I could imagine.
A wilderness house, a pirate ship, a location in a fantasy land...an enduring legacy that lasts long after its stories have faded into memory.
Thanks for reading. 🙂 If you enjoyed this, you can read some of my other recollections here: