The Fort

Power tools. Yes, power tools and a hatchet make a mean fort. This is what I learned from my vacation this week. I guess when I was growing up, the boys in my neighborhood weren't allowed access to power tools, so I really had no idea how three guys on the precipice of manhood could create such a monsterpiece with a circular saw and three small hatchets. The circular saw being an indulgence on the part of their, ahem, grandfather, a.k.a. "Pop."

"Are you sure they should be using that?" I asked over the distinct whine of the saw.
"Yeah, they'll be fine," my father said without looking up from his magazine.
"Shouldn't they wear safety goggles or something?"
He looked up over the deck railing, "Hey guys, put on some safety goggles."

Gee thanks Dad.

That's the problem with grandparents. You can override them, but not always easily. And since no one had lost any fingers, and since the older "boys" were living vicariously through their sons, my husband and brother-in-law were agreeable to the power tools as well. I was easily outnumbered. Six to one, as a matter of fact. So with all the grace and dignity one fretting mother can have, I removed myself and pretended the saw whine was coming from the neighbor's house.

Ignoring the hatchets was another problem. Really the whole mosterpiece started with the hatchets my father bought The Boy and his cousins, S3 and Ty. They've been using them for a few months now, whenever we went to the "mountains." And they're becoming more efficient and brazen with these hatchets too. Who knew three boys could fell a twenty foot tree with a twenty inch diameter with three rather small hatchets? Apparently, with enough dogged-determination, they could. And not just one tree, but at least two, I saw, went down for the count. I had wild visions of small squirming bodies stuck under large fallen trees.

"I promise you they were dead," Joshua pronounced after seeing my horror stricken face. "Pop says we can only chop down the dead trees."

"Well, that's a mighty big dead tree." said I, master of the obvious.

"I swear. It was dead. Really it was. It only had like, two branches on it, and no leaves. I swear," he said.

Josh never got that it wasn't the alive/dead factor as much as it was I wanted to shriek, "THAT FREAKIN' TREE IS FIVE HUNDRED TIMES TALLER THAN YOU!??? ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR EVER LOVIN' MIND?" Thankfully, I was the epitome of control and self-restraint. I merely sighed and walked back into the house. I figured my mother and sister had the right of things, and promptly buried my nose in a book, transporting myself away into other worlds. What I didn't know, I couldn't worry about right?

They hammered, and they sawed, and they chopped. We saw them for meals, when we demanded they stop and eat. We begged them to bathe. They passed out in their tent after a long, productive, day in the woods. They grunted to us when they passed through the house, most likely en route to find Pop for another power tool.

"You want something to eat?"
"Ungh"
"How's the fort?"
"Mmm"
"Good, great talking to you. See ya around."
"Huh?"

A couple of years ago, the boys built a platform between three trees, slats of wood hammered into a tree to act as a ladder. The main beam/tree began at the platform and angled down to the ground, the whole humongous length of the tree. I'm still marveling how they managed to drag the tree, and prop it up. Angled on either side of the beam, the boys placed smaller logs and boards to form the walls, almost tent shape. Add a make-shift door, and some leaves for camouflage and, viola, a fort to rival the forts of their predecessors.

So, now we're home, and the fort stands lonely, slightly incomplete (but really, is a fort ever finished? This is at least its fifth incarnation), and waiting for the return of the boys. I actually saw my son today, the first in about a week. He looks good. He's actually clean. And, despite the circular saw, he still has all of his fingers. What more could a mom want?