Where does the desire to go into the backcountry come from?   When does it start?   I wonder if it came from hanging out with the Lyles?

Lyle L. was an overweight, quiet boy who lived down the lane when we were about 9 years old.   In those days, kids just played anywhere, so he and I would meet in the laneway and look for things to do.   Between us was a large vacant lot overrun by blackberry bushes.   The canes were old and had a long run of growth so they completely engulfed the 100 foot wide lot.   It seemed impenetrable.   Even when we climbed on top of my parents’ garage we still couldn’t fully see into the heart of the bramble jungle.   We walked all around it, and tried to push through, but the tall, tough vines had big thorns and we were cowed by the prospect of the fight, believing it to be impossible to explore the heart of the thorn kingdom.   We enjoyed the late summer blackberry harvest though.   Our mouths and hands would get blackerry-stained as we picked and ate berries, heedless of dinner time or too many berries in a single snacking-time.

One one of these berry harvesting days, a neighborhood black cat entered the brambles over in an alcove and then disappeared.   Curious, we looked over there and saw that if we lifted the front vines carefully, there was a sort-of-tunnel going deep into the brambles.   There was still thorns on the sides and above, but the ground was only littered with old leaves and debris.   We dropped onto all fours and worked our way down the tunnel.   Looking back, this was probably an informal trail used by raccoons, cats, and other “urban roamers” into the greenspace, but we didn’t know that.   We were just intrigued by the possibility of an adventure into an unknown territory.   It took several visits to explore, getting lots of thorn tears so each time we brought better tools (machetes were best) with us to enlarge the opening enough to get right into the heart of the brambles.   We found a semi-open spot around a large boulder and this became our wilderness base for that summer and next.   From that spot, we couldn’t see the houses around us.   We kept this spot a secret from our families and other friends.   We would just go in make up a game or activity, sometimes bringing a stick, some food, or whatever item interested us for that day.   It was our getaway, a green world guarded by thorns.

Our parents weren’t campers or hikers.   At nine, this was our adventure exploring our own special spot, “backcountry” to us.    In the spring that followed, I heard machinery out back one day and was dismayed to see the lot being cleared for a new house. The house was built and a surrounding tall fence completed the destruction and disappearance of our special spot.  Lyle and I seemed to drift apart after that and later he moved away.

Lyle Mc lived about two blocks away in North Vancouver.   I would go to his house to play and sometimes he took me down his u-shaped street to the bottom where the road passed between two parts of a swamp.   All the streams off Mt. Fromme in North Van run down creek valleys to Burrard Inlet, but a few of the smaller streams also flowed down gullies and then trickled into swamps in flatter areas or depressions.   That stream runs through concrete culverts and pipes today and homes have been built above, but when we were 9 years old this swamp was all muck, slime, moss, and skunk cabbage.   Heedless of getting mud all over ourselves, we would work our way into the swamp, jumping from tussocks to moss-covered logs or stumps, holding on to branches, testing spots, plunging walking sticks into the muck, leaping over black ooze to a “dry” spot, and generally daring each other to go further.   A few slimy trees and shrubs and lots of skunk cabbage stood in the swampy ooze.

We liked the southside swamp the best because we could get to a large clump of trees in the middle and we found a special spot where we could sit on horizontal sturdy branches that lay between mossy trunks, our feet dangling above the water.   This was our destination, our special place, unknown to our friends and family.   We never took Lyle L. there because he just wasn’t agile enough.   We should have given him the chance, probably, but we knew that most kids couldn’t make the jumps let alone the spunk to explore a “no-go zone.”

Looking back now, I realize that we never took Lyle Mc to the Bramble Kingdom either.   He was just too hard on the other Lyle, sarcastic about his weight.

With the two Lyles, I started a connection to the “backcountry”, albeit nearby locations we could get to after school and still get home for dinner.   It was a start.