Retrospect: exploration lands, part 0

Self-tutoring about situations in the past: the tutor reflects.

When I was 12 I got a motorbike – a little Honda 50. It was old, but after a trip to the shop, ran fine.

Behind our house was land that likely somebody owned, but we didn’t know who. (I never heard anyone mention an owner.) The tract extended miles back and at least a quarter mile to each side; it was undeveloped second-growth forest. However, as you went back into it, its range on each side grew outward, like a cone. Really, there was infinite land to explore.

I recall at least once, in the trails, possibly miles from home, being stopped by someone on a much bigger motorcycle and told that we shouldn’t be there – someone owned it. For all we knew the owner at that place, if they even existed, was different from the owner of the land behind our houses through which we’d passed to get there.

Regardless, we were a few twelve-year-old kids: in the deserted forest, land ownership meant little to us. We let the lady on her big motorcycle say her peace – eventually she got tired of listening to herself and headed off – then we turned “towards home.” I forget if we really went home or just drove that way for a while, then turned back when we figured she’d be gone. We never saw her again.

Looking back, many places we frequented – on foot, bicycle, or motorbike – were likely owned by some unseen, anonymous entity. Being kids, we never questioned that relationship; we might pass through a place or occupy it a short time, then leave it simply as we’d found it. It was a sustainable relationship that only ended, on my part, because I moved away.

I did realize, when out in second growth forest, or in a lot that had been vacant since memory, that someone had cleared that land and used it for something, some time before. Moreover, even at that age, I wondered why the land had fallen to disuse. I would speculate that, in the past, the area must have been busier than it was when I lived there. Yet, I never found further proof of that. I still wonder about it.