My Summer of War with Fort Courage
The change of seasons here in the Northwest is often signaled by the changing hours of light more than the weather. I guess you'd expect that from a place with six or so different names for rain. Even so, there have been some wonderfully warm, dry days lately, interspersed among the spring showers, hinting that the elusive few sunny weeks we call Summer are approaching.
There is nothing more iconic of my childhood than long summer days spent outside, and in the woods. Add to them a little youthful rivalry and you have the makings of some stirring memories. One such memory is a certain summer of war with Fort Courage.
Fort Courage, named after a cavalry fort in a 60s TV comedy, was everything a kid could imagine a good fort should be. It was huge. It had real log walls, catwalks, multi-story tree-houses, lookouts, a jail, a working canon, and a secure gate to make it defensible. There was just one problem - it belonged to the kids down the block from our "fort" at my best friend's house, making them our rivals.
The feeling was mutual. They did not like the threat of a competing group of kids trying to outdo them right there in their neighborhood, so they did everything they could to stop our progress.
We would be working away when suddenly a dirt clod or a stick would come flying at us, forcing us to stop and take cover. That was sometimes followed by a few not-so-hollow threats and an occasional shouting match.
Of course we reciprocated at their end of the street, casting rocks, sticks, and insults at them as they looked down, unafraid, from behind their massive fortifications.
That was all fine and good. That is the stuff that constitutions are made of. But the conflict turned to war when they began to take us captive for forced labor.
The trail between my house and my friend's passed dangerously close to Fort Courage and I was captured by rival forces on more than one occasion. Once under their control, I was forced to haul freshly harvested alder logs from the nearby woods for their ever expanding walls. It was fort building, Great Pyramid style.
It took at least two prisoners to haul the sizable logs, with one or two guards keeping us in line with menacing switches. When I did manage to escape once, they tackled me and took me to their jail, a cramped chicken wire enclosure below one of their structures. There I received my only injury from our battles when I backed up into a protruding nail as I attempted to shift to a more comfortable position. The resulting scar on my backside became a secret badge of honor.
The forced labor and detention never lasted too long. Eventually dinner time came and we were released to return home for food and sleep before starting over the next day. And so it was that summer. We had some small victories but more often than not they would prevail.
All that changed one day when we found Fort Courage silent and unguarded. To our surprise, the door that had symbolized security and strength was also unlocked. We crept cautiously inside, wary it might be another trap, but no one materialized. In a few moments of inspiration and swift action, we conceived and carried out the ultimate humiliation on our rivals by removing the internally-vulnerable hinges from the massive door. We gave a cry of victory as we let it fall outward and downward onto the trail. We had finally done it. We had won! But where we're our enemies?
We did not realize at the time the whoosh of the door as it hit the ground was the whoosh of childhood passing. As fall began , then winter, the door laid where it fell. The boy defenders of the fort did not return or rebuild - they had become young men. And we were not far behind them. There would never be another summer of war with Fort Courage.
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