The Woods

by Tom Peters

Construction on the two-bedroom house my nine other siblings and I would grow up in started in 1954. I was filled with wonder as a five-year-old as we approached the site for the first time. The concrete basement it’s just been poured a few days earlier and had an earthy stone, damp scent as I peered over the edge as my nervous father held my shoulders. As the wooden skeleton frame sprouted from the basement edge the sweet smell of pine filled the empty spaces between studs as my brother and I waved through the walls.

The suburb was growing gradually but, in those days, there was a 3-acre wooded area at the edge of our backyard. Elms, Oaks and Maple trees shared space and what we simply called ‘the woods’. I learned quickly that if I wandered in my little forest to the right, I would reach Abbott Street within minutes, a forbidden boundary set by my parents. If I walked straight through the woods, I would reach the trailer court another off-limits area. However, entering my personal natural haven and turning left, I could walk for a long way until it opened into a big, grassy field. Fortunately, there was a large area of bare ground where we used to play baseball from cool blossoming April to hot, muggy August.

Every season, the woods gave off a wide variety of smells from clear, crisp snowy winters to pungent, humid, hot summers. Spring had a welcoming floral fragrance as wildflowers burst through the rain-soaked soil. In the fall, crackling leaves, to decaying wood, and the presence of wild mushrooms gave the woods the rich scent of earthiness I associate in my later years with truffles. It doesn’t surprise me that expensive, sought-after French and Italian truffles are an obsession with some folks.

The woods were destroyed when I was a teen to make away for more houses. But I feel quite blessed for the formative years I spent with my nose so close to mother earth.