A new bridge to the "island"

There's a new bridge to "the island," so today on a trip home, I had to try it out.

"The island" isn't really an island at all. It is the area of land across a small creek from my parent's house, with a much larger creek interrupting the "island" from the large hill beyond it. Trees created the rest of the border defining the land we called "the island," separating it from a large swath of field.

The island, creeks and hills around are where I spent many hours of my childhood, climbing up in a tree house made by my brother, riding bikes, building forts, and clambering through the water, looking for signs of life in the tiny pools of water cut off from the rest of the stream.

During the summer, I'd tend to a tiny garden in the adjacent field, or pick raspberries along the edge of that field, or play baseball with my brother. I'd also blaze trails through the weeds with my mini-bike, carving an outline of the field at 35 miles per hour. In the fall, walnut and hickory trees provided a bounty if I chose to harvest what was there for the taking, racing with the squirrels to pick the crop before they could carry it away. It was a place to get lost, to separate from the world, so in that sense, it truly was an island, an oasis.

During my recent visit, the island resembled little of the place I knew in my memories, the paths to the creek taken over by Mother Nature as she reclaims what has always been hers. The tree house has been long gone, a casualty to 15 years of rot that necessitated its removal, lest it entice a new generation of explorer who would find an unstable, unsafe hideaway.

The biggest change, of course, happened more than a decade ago, when the owners of much of that adjoining land -- which contained the field, the hill and much of the large creek -- sold the land to a developer to make homes.

The field where I once harvested peppers and tomatoes and green beans hasn't been broken by till since the Clinton administration. Four-foot tall grasses provide cover for insects and rodents, and this late spring play host to the chorus of periodical cicadas that has emerged for its massive birth ritual.

The sound of 10 million cicadas -- give or take, I stopped counting -- couldn't drown out the memory of my reaction years ago when the land was sold, and how I retaliated. Just a day before my 19th birthday, I learned that the land had been sold. I was devastated to know that it would be carved up and made into housing sites.

The creek would be bridged, altering the stream forever. Paths that provided the perfect trails for walking most of the year, or sledding in the winter, would be turned into roads. The woods were no longer ours. Never mind that they never were ours; the owners had so kindly allowed us to roam them and use the field for a garden for nearly 20 years, but the increasing age of the six sisters forced their hand. They had to sell, the sooner the better.

When the developer began his work, I looked away; I couldn't bear to see what was happening to "my" woods and "my" creek. After the first phase was complete, I couldn't help but be curious, so I wandered over. And that's when I acted out.

Fliers advertising the new sites for homes were an easy target, and in my anger, I snatched a small stack of them from the rack enclosure, intent on keeping people from moving in. It was a small -- OK, very small -- silent protest that made no perceptible difference, but I couldn't stop myself, on at least three occasions. Most times I left a few, so as not to make it obvious that all were disappearing much too quickly for explanation. They were there for taking, and that's what I did.

Time marched on, and my meager efforts at sabotage failed to affect much change. More than 10 years later, there are still just a handful of homes up on that hill. The woods and creek are irreversably changed, but that happened regardless of my silent protest.

I guess I always understood that it all (the sale, the houses) was necessary, but even today I remain ambivalent about the whole episode. But that's what I thought of today as I walked across the new bridge to the "island."