Forts!

Welcome to Summer 2009!

It didn't take long on our first trip to the park for several students to find a large Western red cedar with the perfect trunk to support a fort. Eddie was the most fervent seeker of sticks, and Tina, Bert, and Frankie joined him. No stick - including whole branches! - was too small for the strength of thie muscles or imaginations.

Frankie: I helped get it together in that tree. It was easy putting the big branches up.

Bert: But you didn't weave them through. I put pinecones for decoration. I was the bark peeler. I liked putting the pine cones on and peeling on the bark.

@very: Could someone live in it, you think?

Frankie: Yes, me! I could go "Bam!" [knock it down] - make it again - "Bam!" - make it again ...

Bert: No me. It doesn't have as much carpeting and it doesn't have candles. Could we have a sleepover in that fort?

Frankie: Maybe we could make s'mores!

Building forts is a memory that most adults carry with them from their own childhoods, myself included. Watching the creation of such a structure of architectural balance, of protection and provision, and of collaborative production, some themes that pervade such an activity come to the forefront of my thoughts.

What is it about building our own shelter in the wilderness that so entices us? We live in homes that are positively lavish compared to the accomplishments of the first humans, yet children relish in the return to such primitive activity. What is it within us that draws us back to that? I remember when I was my students' age, I wanted to found a Back-to-Nature club that would live in homemade forts, live off of foraged food, and wear clothes made out of leaves. Looking back on it now, I wonder if it all isn't a certain expression of autonomy, a common theme throughout childhood.

But why in the wilderness? I've noticed students make forts out of anything - mats, pillows, cardboard ... but never were so many kids involved in fort-making as today at the park with natural materials.

Richard Louv's book Last Child in the Woods puts forth a theory that the majority of children today are suffering from nature deficit disorder - that is, they are deprived of sufficient contact with nature. He builds his assertion on E.O. Wilson's theory of biophilia: that all humans are innately intrigued, attracted to, and wired to enjoy interacting with the natural world. Perhaps part of the expression of our autonomy is linked to how we use our surroundings - the natural world being the most pur - to become self-sufficient. Maybe our desire to interact with nature runs parallel to our search for autonomy, as it represents the "bigger world" we are increasingly longing to function within independently. Evolutionar psychology would suggest that we are, indeed, innately drawn to play activities as children that give us the practice needed to survive and protect ourselves as responsible adults, a progression observed in our distant animal relatives.

I would venture to believe that there is a little bit of all of these ideas embedded in the phenomenon of forts. There is a wonder and mystery to the natural world that draws us in, and I think that children are a bit more in tune with what miracles occur within it every day. There is also an immense sense of satisfaction in the completion of a project that entailed investment, organization, labor, and detail.

We all learn, in many ways, to build walls of protection around ourselves. These walls are physical, social, psychological, and provide us with the structure and scaffolding of our lives. At this phase of early to middle childhood, I see in each of these children that inner Tarzan in all of us that needs to come out, beat his chest, and feel part of the jungle.