Event Date: 1980–1983

Event Date: 1980–1983 Drafted: 2025-11-23

On the south side of the yard was a narrow path worn by feet and hooves — a secret, liminal space running between the fence line and the shrubs. It wasn’t wide enough for adults, which made it feel like it belonged to Helen and me alone.

This was where stories grew.

We walked back and forth along that little trail, inventing narratives as kids do — full of heroes, secret bases, forts, battles, treasure, and magical creatures that lived in the shrubs. The fence became a border wall of a kingdom; the shrubs were enchanted forests; the dirt path was the road between worlds.

Sometimes, the goats would peer through the slats, interrupting our stories with a bleat like a strange character appearing uninvited. Other days, when the wind blew just right, the tall grass beyond the fence shimmered like something alive — a sign, in our minds, that magic was stirring.

No matter what upheaval happened in real life — money worries, Mom’s errands, chores, tantrums, fights — the fence-line path was constant. Dusty, narrow, secret.

I think children need places like that. A corridor between the real and the imagined. A place where stories become maps for a life still forming.

I didn’t know it then, but that little path trained the part of my brain that eventually created Stormroot, Understory, Widdershins — entire worlds built from a child’s ability to turn a strip of dirt into something mythic.