A Happy Experience

Amid all the gloom and doom of adult life I thought I would write about a genuinely happy experience. It shows how children can be happy and enjoy their environment.

I would have been somewhere between four and six, I think nearer six. My parents bought a house and were thinking about how to heat the house over winter.

Vancouver is a centre of the timber industry. One of the byproducts of the huge logging industry is bark.

In about August my parents bought a huge quantity of bark which was tipped into our garage.

The bark pile was considerably taller than I was, and with the main garage door closed the pile was stable. I and a friend started burrowing into the pile of bark creating tunnels and passages. We used the bigger pieces as props and for roofing, and of course we had a den deep in the pile.

Day after day we got dirty. We were having such fun that we were never told off.

I could not work out what was happening but the bark pile seemed to be shrinking. The shrinkage was slow at first but eventually the pile shrank and shrank until it was no fun any more.

That period of my life was one of the happiest passages I ever had.

Sadly my parents sold that house so I never had another bark pile to play in. I now put shredded bark on my garden but it just isn't the same.