There was a place in my youth that was special in spite of it’s close proximity to the elementary school which I attended, and loathed. Although it does not exist now, exactly as it had when I was regimented off to the rigors of disciplined education, I remember being especially attracted to one secluded marginal area just beyond the periphery of the school's playground. The entirety of this public neighborhood had covered an area roughly three city blocks by three city blocks with one more attached at the southwestern corner, effectively creating a comma shaped island amid a sea of residential housing. At the time of my youth, this community green area was diagonally bisected from it’s northeast to it’s southwest by a natural trough of land which acted as an open drainage for the community of North Belmont’s storm run-off. As the landscape spread outward and upward from this shallow gully that snaked through the park, it offered several plateaus. To the north, one centrally located was for a baseball field and just beyond that, a public swimming pool. To the northwest, a water tower stood beyond a large picnic cabana. The opposite side of the dissected landscape rose up to the south and southeast, offering a seldom used tennis court on the middle level, and on the plateau above that, the elementary school, while the local community center rested at the lowest area of the park to it’s southwest.
In a central location to this vicinity, halfway up one of the relatively steeper areas of the incline, a hidden little dirt ridge existed, wild in appearance and satisfyingly remote from the backside of the school’s playground and nearby tennis court. As a semi-excavated trench itself, it was isolated from view by various unkempt scraggy shrubs and small trees. This "scoop" of soil was special to perhaps a handful of other youths besides me, whom I had never met while in the place myself. But from occasionally discovered evidence, was obviously an ideal place to hide while addicting themselves to smoking or to drool over stolen pictures torn from their father’s nudie magazines.
For me, the attraction to this secret hideaway was with the fact that I found myself as a free spirit with no one to answer to or defend myself from. I could be "my own person" when I played in the area, being convinced that I remained far from prying eyes. It wore thin on me, those relentless and painful lessons learned of my "place" in the social fabric of our community where the "adherents of bullying" incessantly taught. Here, with the companionship of my solitude I could find my confidence and fortitude without having to stand up to anyone. I could lie on my back upon the fluffy, cool soil and gaze intently beyond the tree tops to where my soul endlessly ached to fly. And in that intangible desire, this place had become profoundly significant in ways that I now elaborate upon.
Simply by marching onward towards adulthood, the full enjoyment of being there was soon put aside. For how could such a serious revelation occur in one’s life which in a single moment created both the realization that I had an obligation to fulfill and no idea what the obligation was supposed to be at the same time? Time had both frozen the enjoyment of certain privileged knowledge in place while simultaneously dragging my tertiary existence beyond the youthful exuberance of having it. This was a place to make something final, but until some responsibility was conclusively fulfilled, I felt that I had no further business being there. In later years as a young adult, I did in fact return. It had become an arduous task upon me to attempt a reclamation of the inspiration that once originated there.
Regrettably, when next I had returned, some extreme land changing events entirely obliterated the area from what I had known it to be as a child. What I had known as an open drainage then, had become a spot where a cement culvert had been placed. Along the entire course of what was once wild vegetation, it had become domesticated with fill dirt and mown grass. Ironically, in spite of the dramatic physical changes this area assumed, for a few decades, the placement of a short retaining wall with a frontage of four tall pine trees in a row had, actually landmarked where the subject of my supernatural encounter still persists, in tact and invisible to mortal activities until the very day when I finally operate the key....