Someone Else's Adventure

 

 

 

We went up to the mountains to a beautiful riverside camping area, near Monashee.  We walked down the river as far as their was places to walk, until we came to a spot we could not pass due to high banks.  Hidden down in a clump of trees, we found this shelter and the imagination could run wild.  It was peculiar.  It was strange to find a shelter so far out in the mountains, not near a city, or town.  I figured someone had either been homeless or had been fulfilling some kind of challenge for shelter-building.  What made it most strange was…see the swing?  The imagination stirs a story of the shelter.  If I had not persisted in my walk, head down, walking until we could not walk, I would have missed this wonder.

Upon looking closer at the shelter, I noticed that the platform was meant to be sturdy and not temporary.  It was about seven feet high.  It was lashed together with nails only in the side slats and the flooring.  It appeared someone had kicked in some of the thin slats that made the wall.  There was more lumber in a pile to finish off the walls.

 

It is that swing that puzzles me most.  It gave the place a feminine feel.  As well, there is a line hung behind the shelter.  I allowed my creative mind to ponder what feminine story this shelter held.  Did a woman ‘run’ with a small child?  Was she trying to find a place to hide?  Was a woman sick of the rat race and just wanted to be out in nature with a child?  So much time and effort to lay those logs down for an upper platform.  That swing!!!!!  I was mesmerized and full of wonder.  Still am.

It could not be a man’s tree stand for hunting.  If a man had done it…that swing  ?????  Did the man become homeless and sought shelter way out in the woods along a river?  We saw lots of rocks laid in semi-circles to catch gold (and, apparently, there is gold in that river) was he just hanging around that area because he was gold panning?  There were large piles of sand that seemed to have been screened.  But, “the swing”!  Why would a man build a swing?

I love adventures.  Happening upon this shelter brought out the child wonderment in me.  Have you ever come across something that left you truly wondering?  What did you happen upon that set your own child wonderment going?

©Carol Desjarlais 9.13.20