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Benjamin McCombs

Mr. Ermert

Senior Literature

04 September 2018

Exploring the Wildness of My Curiosity

When I was in about 4th or 5th grade, my friends and I would love to go hiking over the

weekends. We would bring water, food, and snacks for the entire day we explored the nature.

Not only that, but we brought our hiking gear with us such as rope, shovels, and walkie-talkies to

communicate with each other if we got separated. Every weekend I would look forward to go

hiking with my friends and each time we found something new. We explored about 30-40 acres

of land in which we memorized almost completely. We all pretty much new that land by heart

and we were so comfortable with it that we gave each area names. We had several forts and

places we named that each had their own certain cool aspects. The three main ones I remember

were Fort Granite, Death Valley, and Fort Root. Those were places we loved to spend our day

and their were so many things we could do there.

Fort Granite was the first fort we ever established in the wilderness. As you can guess, it

had huge pieces of granite everywhere as well as tall pepper trees that we could climb. We would

usually eat our lunch here and play tag. One day we made a plan to build a treehouse in these tall

pepper trees and we brought our rope to start climbing them and get started. It was so fun to

build this tree house and the trees were usually 3 stories high with low overhanging branches that

we could get up easily. We went to home depot and our parents bought some wood to lay across

the branches that would act as a floor. Even though we never truly finished the treehouse once
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you got up there and sat down, there was a wonderful view of the valley that lay before us. It

made me curious of what could lay beyond.

After we finished eating our lunch one day we went to explore more of the wilderness.

We started hiking out of the trees and discovered the place we named Death Valley. It was

surrounded with dead bushes and some sort of rotten pumping looking plant that had molded

over the years. We bought machetes with us to chop through all the wilderness and forge a path

of our own. Despite it being a lifeless wasteland, there were a few flowers that could sustain life

in the “Death Valley” which we soon called it. It was a tough couple miles of a trek, but we

eventually got through it and found something new that we could explore, a huge lake that was

up to 8 feet deep.

We first found this lake by following small streams from their source. Where the stream

spouted from the lake we called this Fort Root. It had so many tree branches and bambo coming

from the ground it made it an interesting place to hangout. We made a small dam and dug a hole

in the ground to make a water hole that we could all enjoy together. It was a great place to cool

off and enjoy the water, especially when it was warm out. We would then go up and find large

logs to tie together and make a raft to float us on the lake. There was this one point at the far

edge of the lake we could jump off a 20 foot rock into the water. But once California was in a

serious drought we couldn’t jump any more and the lake became very shallow. Soon it was filled

with only a couple of feet or so of water and the mud was like quicksand. You would sink

anytime you stepped into it. But still it was a cool place for us to find while it lasted.

All these adventures I had when I was young changed my life forever. It would give me a

new way of looking at nature and understanding it more. I could not only have fun, but enjoy
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nature how it is supposed to be used for observance, not abuse. It also kept me physically active

when I wasn't in a sport and made me altogether a better person. I learned from then on to enjoy

nature and everything around and to respect it.