The Field

When we first moved to Timmins, and for years afterwards, the lots across the street, the space between Hart Street and Murray and bounded by Brousseau, were owned by the district school board and remained undeveloped. In various stages of growth, every so often sheared to the nub, it was a spark of imagination and a little space of bush, a couple of blocks from the real thing. It was a wonderful playground for all around.

There were trails of passage, worn down by thousands of footsteps, trails that remained even when it had grown feral. That only happened once, when the shrubs had reached a proper height to create a proper maze. But more often than not, the bushes were no more than ankle height. There were thistles and fungi, blueberry bushes and alders scrub. But when it was a proper maze, it was a brilliant place for hide and seek!

I remember when, in the early/mid ‘70s, my father bought a Skidoo. We didn’t have it for long, a few years at most, I suppose, but when we did we had a caboose trailer too. I recall hours of bone chilling cold back there, despite our being wrapped up in a heavy woolen blanket, when Karen and I were being dragged along behind my parents on the sled. My feet were blocks of numb ice at the end of those family outings. Not fun. But when we weren’t being frozen in the caboose, Karen and I would take the skidoo out onto the barren lot across the street for a ride. That was fun, that was thrilling. There were laps and loops and figure 8s etched all over that field. Karen drove more often than not, but I did too, never at great speed—my mother told us to keep it down, and since we were in plain sight, we did; to do otherwise risked our never being allowed to play on the sled, ever again.

One winter, Keith came to visit for a weekend. We were playing war out in that field, with hockey sticks for rifles. We stormed the banks, and defended them. Then we split apart, adding hide and seek battles to the scope of play. I was left to seek. He was out in the deep, windswept field, and I was sneaking up on him, keeping low, using the high banks for cover. I risked a peak over the bank, expecting to see his toque clearly, an obvious dark spot out in the stretch of snow. But he was nowhere to be seen. I panned left and right. No Keith. So, once I reached where I knew I’d seen him last, I bounded up and over the bank, expecting him to scream BANG, BANG BANG! But all I heard was silence, and the wind. I crawled, my belly sliding over the snow. When I reached where I’d last seen him, there was just an empty foxhole, and a berm neatly piled up around it. I looked over the berm and discovered he'd hollowed a tunnel.

“Keith?” I called.

“Down here,” he answered. Climbing down feet first into the hole, I found he’d been busy. He’s burrowed out a warm cozy tunnel down there. We spent the next hour expanding the space...until it collapsed on our heads.

That began a furious burrowing out of banks by David Miller and me after Keith had gone home. At least until we saw the snowplows and massive city snow blowers pushing back and cutting into those banks, crushing them, chewing them up and spitting them out into trucks. Visions of being caught inside one of them when these monsters passed ended our snow tunneling phase.

Shortly after that, the school board sold off the lots, houses rose up on them, and that short-lived free-for-all playground disappeared for good.

There was disappointment. There was mourning. They’d stolen our domain.