Jungle

My best childhood friend lived on the far side of a small woodlot, which we called the Jungle, consisting of mulberries, trees-of-heaven and plump, twisted Manitoba maples. An old stone and wire fence surrounded it, but the only remains of a building was a bare garage-sized foundation. The property belonged to an old woman no one had ever seen. We built tree houses on the generous maple branches. Wild sweet cicely, Osmorhiza claytoni, grew underneath. We liked to chew the succulent, sugary stems. Many happy memories centre on the Jungle. Later we dug an underground hideout, where I would sit and watch my friend smoke a joint, too cautious to partake.

Trails around Guelph's outskirts sometimes reveal things that remind me of the Jungle, like the foundation of the farmhouse, which must have once overlooked a sweeping vista of the Eramosa River. It is now overgrown with a wilderness of lilacs, little remaining but a wrought-iron stairway. Sometimes a clump of spring bulbs will appear in the middle of the woods, surviving from a garden that vanished decades ago.

Nature, left to its devices, takes care of things. We will eventually outgrow this planet. Beauty will clean up after us.