Event Date: 1978–1985

Event Date: 1978–1985 Drafted: 2025-11-23

Under the back porch was my first worldbuilding studio.

A low crawlspace of shadow and sunbeams, it was a place adults rarely entered — small, dusty, mysterious. The dirt was soft and untouched except for the tracks I made with my Tonka trucks and farm machinery.

This was where entire civilizations rose and fell between breakfast and supper.

Highways carved through the soil. Bridges were crafted from sticks and scrap wood. Rivers flowed when I poured water from a metal cup. Dori pressed her nose into the tunnels I built, occasionally collapsing them in her enthusiasm.

The world under the porch smelled like: • dry earth • sun-warmed wood • the faint mineral tang of old concrete • dog fur

Every day the sandbox transformed. I was always rebuilding, always redesigning. A tiny civil engineer shaping a kingdom that adults could not see.

Sometimes, when the wind pushed through the porch slats, dust would drift like tiny galaxies. I didn’t know it then, but this was my first training ground for Stormroot, Understory, Hedgewitch — a child’s landscape of miniature triumphs and quiet architecture.

Imagination had its first roots in that shadowy little world.