Fort is evidence of fun, our roots

I came across the fort last weekend in the woods not far from my home.

It was a nice fort, as forts go. Simple but substantial. It was built at ground level in a stand of Norway pines.

The fort hadn't been there last fall or earlier this winter. It had been constructed after the snow fell.

Kids, I figured.

They had built it from downed branches. They were stacked vertically to make the walls, and more were propped on top to form a roof. The shelter was perhaps 8 feet square, open on the east side. I popped in for a look. No cigarette butts. No pop or beer cans. Just boot-prints next to a small sitting bench made of logs.

I was happy. This is what kids ought to be doing on a winter day, I thought.

I could almost see them out there, mooching around in the woods one winter day. One of them, perhaps inspired by the abundance of downed limbs, probably said, "Hey, let's build a fort."

And that was all it took. The gathering began. They heaved and dragged. They leaned and propped. I could see them panting and shuffling through the snow with their building materials, lugging back the closest branches first, then those from farther and farther away.

Oh, that would have been fun. Humans have been gathering materials and building fort-like structures in the woods for eons. Something deep inside of us says, "Make shelter." And off we go. Ask anyone who owns a deer shack.

I remember a bunch of us doing much the same on a gravel beach along the shore of Lake Superior. The beach was littered with driftwood logs. We saw all of that raw material, and someone said, "We could make a sauna."

We were several days into a canoe trip along the Canadian shore, and a sauna sounded mighty good. For an hour we trudged and hauled and stacked. We stretched tarps over the logs. We built a fire outside, heated rocks and hauled them inside.

The water up there was 44 degrees in July, and that sauna was so hot we jumped in the lake twice.

I imagined those kids sitting on the bench in their fort. They must have felt snug and sheltered and happy. They probably made plans to meet there on other winter days. Maybe they will. Maybe not.

That doesn't seem to matter. What matters is that for a couple of hours on a winter day, they were out among the tall pines. They were working and thinking and planning. They might have heard the tapping of a hairy woodpecker or the nasal call of a red-breasted nuthatch. Maybe they heard the call of the great-horned owl I heard in the same woods a couple of nights later.

The point is, they were out there where any of those small events might have happened, breathing clean air, inhaling the scent of pine, learning the textures of snow.

Kids, doing what kids ought to be doing on a winter day.

SAM COOK is a Duluth News Tribune columnist and outdoors writer. Reach him at (218) 723-5332 or scook@duluthnews.com or scook@duluthnews.com . Follow him on Twitter at "samcookoutdoors."