Until I was in the third grade my parents, brother, and I lived in a farm house so small we all slept in one bedroom. That room also served as my brother’s and my main play area, the rest of the house being off limits for anything so unserious. The house’s principal heat in the winter came from two fireplaces, one in the bedroom and one in the living room. On cold, dark winter mornings, their newly set fires were appreciated sources of light and heat; but when I was eight years old all that changed when we moved to what had been my grandfather’s house about a mile away. Even that short move meant a real change in living. Granddaddy’s “big house” had central heat, carpet on the floor, bathrooms with tubs, and big porches that caught the summer breezes. My brother and I even had our own bedroom, which was immediately divided into two nation states with a border running down the middle of the room. Free transit for aliens was granted but leaving clothes, toys or any other personal property in the opposing state’s territory was considered an unprovoked invasion for which there would be consequences.

But to us, my brother and me, the real benefit of the move was the expanded opportunity for outdoor exploration. In the fields and forest of our now larger farm we discovered low lying wetlands and even bogs. To help drain those low spots a number of ponds had been dug over the years and each was a place where armadas of home-made, miniature boats could be launched then blown to bits with firecrackers too large for safety. We could also fish in those ponds where blue-gill bream and large-mouth bass awaited a hook and cork dangling from a cane pole. Fly rods and spinning reels were unnecessary distractions from the task at hand: catch fish.

But for real adventure, there were the woodlands. In them we found swamps that could be knee-deep in water at times and completely dry in others. Those were the home of knobby-kneed cypress trees, their long beards of Spanish moss swaying in the breeze and reedy grasses growing at their base. This, to me, was the forest primeval. On slightly higher ground the tall pines grew, their arbors whispering quietly in any puff of air. Tough palmettos and cabbage palms were scattered around, as well, their fronds reminding passers-by that the tropics were not so far away.

From the ponds and swamps you could hear the bullfrogs booming and see quick-winged ducks flitting in and out. Mourning doves, their wings whistling as they flew, roosted in neighboring oak groves and in the pines quail skittered about whistling their bob-white song. Possums, raccoons, and foxes ran through swamp and forest alike and on rare occasion an alligator or beaver would still rest in their dens at water’s edge. In those woodlands, every boy was a Daniel Boone, every tree was a fortress, and every waterway an ocean.

In the early morning quiet with the fog still lying in the low places it was a wonderful thing to hear a quail whistle in the forest, to see a fish jump in the pond, or at the edge of some moss-draped swamp to find the tracks of a raccoon in route to a meal. Life on a south Georgia farm field could be a dreary, backbreaking experience; but in the forests you could always find a wonder of the wild. Those wonders are still there though scarcer now. Friend, go find them and tell your children.