The Year of the Pyromaniacs

“You go first.” 

 “This was your idea!”

 “Your house is closer."

“Just go. I’ll be right behind you.”

“Yeah but if they’re in there, they’ll get me and you’ll run!”

Frozen in space and time, Lyndsay and I stood at the entrance to the woods behind her house, arguing who would take the daring first step beneath the trees. Neither of us wanted to be the sacrificial lamb sent to the slaughter, so we stood, dead still, waiting and hoping the other would get some nerve. I looked ahead, peering into the wooded distance, hoping to see any sign of movement or reason for us run like hell. Nothing moved and, although my 11 year old eyes were weakening fast, there was no sign of the notorious KB gang.

The woods that divided our development from The Franklin Mills Mall and the wild streets of Philadelphia were notorious. These woods protected our little suburb from the “big bad city," but it was into these woods that the underbelly of society fled. Thieves from the mall frequented the trees, dodging cops and mall security who were hot on their trail. It wasn’t uncommon for the inhabitants of my development to see helicopters flying overhead, shining beacons of light into the wooded area below or cop cars slowly driving by at night. But for us kids, something more sinister lurked inside.  For the KB, or the Kick Butt Gang, the woods were their “home away from home." Mostly teenagers, they went back there to drink, get high, or cause some sort of mischief. Everyone knew a friend of the kid, who knew someone, who got dragged back there and beat up. No one went back there alone, expecting to come out again in one piece.

Me and Lyndsay were different.

Best friends and kindred spirits, we wanted to venture inside. The allure of those tall trees that stretched on and up, tickled our imaginations. At night, the trees whispered, pleading for us to take the plunge. We didn’t answer their call, at first anyway. We weren’t stupid; we heard the stories about the KB Gang. We didn't know what “to be raped” meant, but we convinced ourselves that this would be the consequence if they ever caught us. We knew it was bad--the word just emoted fear in use-- and that was enough.

 For us, it didn’t matter; we could no longer avoid the call.

“Fine, we’ll go together!” I said after realizing Lyndsay was not going to budge. We clasped hands and after a reassuring nod, stepped onto the path beneath the trees. 

A vacuum sucked the sound out of the woods. There were no birds, squirrels, or even the sound of falling leaves to pacify the overwhelming quiet. The quiet made us cautious. Every step was thought out and our eyes darted from tree to tree, looking for concealment. Our hands formed one, solid bond that urged us on. We followed the path, knowing it would be foolish to leave it. The path widened and we stepped into a small clearing. We found the KB gang’s hang out; the remainder of a tree house created a wooden, solid floor beneath the leaves, an old couch, worn from the weather, sat in the middle, with beer cans and cigarette butts littering the ground.

            “What do we do now?” Lyndsay asked. 

A twig snapped and without a second thought, we darted to the left path. We ran, still clutching each other’s hands, never daring to look behind. We followed the path down and around, getting closer and closer to the small creek that ran through the woods. Eventually after a few minutes of running like maniacs, we realized we were being stupid; no one was following us. We stopped to catch our breaths and look around. We stood on top of a sort of cliff that overlooked the creek. Across the creek, we saw a small clearing, surrounded by trees with an open space in the middle.

“We need to get down there," I said, feeling drawn to it. With some difficulty, we managed to climb down the “ravine.” We crossed the creek and stepped, for the first time, onto the little space.

The trees seemed to separate in a perfect circle, growing everywhere but in the small dirt space where we now stood. The grass was the greenest I had ever seen; nothing like it grew in Philadelphia or in any of its area suburbs. We walked around in wonder; peering through trees and branches, walking slowly on the pebble beach that led to the creek, and running our hands through the cold stream that led us here. It was perfect. The clearing had been waiting all this time, dreaming of the day we would come and claim it.

 KB Gang or not, this was ours.

The next few weeks, we dedicated to fixing up our place. Every spare minute was spent in the woods. We ran from school to the trees. Weekends were no longer our own; they were used for one common goal--to block in our little clearing and make it our own. Figuring we needed some help, we told Lyndsay’s brother, Michael and a few others from the neighborhood about what we found. Naturally, we bound them by secret oath. And we found it necessary to blind fold each new member on their first trip down, which was very tricky when crossing the creek but an essential in the long run. We no longer feared the KB gang; we passed through their hangout without a second glance. We found freedom in the woods that not even the KB Gang could take away. A freedom like nothing we had ever experienced. We could scream and run, and every day we learned something new.

We discovered fire in the woods.

It had been raining all day, but we had a commitment to the woods. A little rain could not stop us. Once we stepped beneath the shade, we felt immune to the outside world; inside our hideout, nothing could touch us. The woods gave us super-human strength, or so we thought. The trees above did not protect us from the elements and within a half hour, we were soaked. But to call it a day wasn’t in us.

                       

“Hey! Let’s make a fire!” Lyndsay yelled, as if this was her first brilliant idea. She quickly dashed back to her house to get matches.

In the time it took her to run back, we both could have been snug and dry inside her house, but that was too easy. We were ruffin’ it, or at least we convinced ourselves we were. When she got back, I had made a little fire pit out of stones and had collected  dry sticks and leaves for a fire. We knelt down over the pit, and struck the matches. One, two, three matches gone. Our age showed we did not know what we were doing--this was before either of us had thought of smoking. And before Girl Scouts had taught us how to properly construct a fire. We wasted almost half the book until, finally, we got a spark. Throwing it down into the pit, we watched as the leaves slowly ignited. They shriveled and contorted in shape and smoke rose from their ashes. The sticks were too wet and there were no flames, but that was enough. That one spark had triggered something in us both.

 

We were addicted to the flame. Smokey the Bear had warned us about the “danger of forest fires," but the smell of burning wood had consumed our senses. We craved it like a drug. The remedy for every problem was to light a fire; “It’s been a long day….let’s light a fire, ” was our favorite excuse. When it got hotter, and the sweat poured down our faces, we still lit fires. Now, we went to the woods to be pyromaniacs and not a day went by that we weren’t striking matches into a waiting pit of twigs and newspaper.

Because of the constant fires, our clothes reeked from the smoke, and our new fear was of our parents smelling it. Our parents really did not know we were going down there in the first place, let alone starting fires. We had a few remedies to mask the scent; we tried standing outside for a while, before going into Lyndsay’s house or we scrubbed the stench from our hands in the stream. But, some thing’s we could not control- like the smell of fire outside. One night, after a long day of lighting fires in the woods, Lyndsay and I were sitting in her room getting ready for bed. Her mom came in to say goodnight and said, “It smells like something’s burning outside. Goodnight girls." With eyes bulging out of my head, I tried to remain calm. I waited until she left the room, and then reacted.

“Are you sure we put that last one out?” I asked, running to Lyndsay’s window, expecting to see flames leaping from the woods.

“I think we did,” she answered, questioningly.

We did not sleep a wink that night. We expected to hear fire engines at any moment, or the cops coming to arrest us. Every hour, one of us got up to look out the window, just in case we needed to warn the neighbors.

Scared is an understatement; we imagined life in prison and prayed for morning.

           

The fire engines never came. The woods were still in one piece the next morning and so was our sanity. There was a huge sigh of relief when we looked out the window at 8 AM, still seeing the green from the trees. We were saved and for us, it did not change a thing. We went down that very day and started another blaze, like nothing happened.

 Then the bottom really fell out.

           

A few weeks later, a small group of us were down in the woods. Lyndsay’s cousin Ally was visiting for the weekend and we needed to “initiate” her, which involved Ally lighting her first fire. We handed her the matches and told her what to do. Before long, she had a small flame going. I turned my back on her for a second, and when I turned back , she was holding what looked like a fire ball. She found a dried out bush and when she held it over the fire, it instantly ignited. Fearing she would burn her hands, she dropped it into the small fire, causing a huge flame to burst from the pit. We stood around in wonder, hypnotized by the dancing flames.

“OH MY GOD! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” we heard someone scream. We looked up, and saw that a woman was standing outside of her house, which sat directly in front of us. We never realized, in all those weeks, that her house had a perfect view of our hideout. We quickly put the flames out and, like prairie dogs, hit the ground. I looked up and saw that the woman was trying to navigate her way down to us.

           

“Run,” I screamed.

Everyone shot up and started to run towards the entrance of the hideout. As we sprinted across the creek and up the other side, Ally tripped, causing a domino affect of everyone who was behind her. “Get up! Get up! Do you wanna get caught?” I yelled. The panic had sunk in, and I could only imagine what would happen if that woman found us down there with matches and smelling of soot. Jumping to our feet, we ran up and out of the woods. It was a mass exodus; kids ran this way and that, trying to put as much space between them and the woods as possible. Lyndsay, Michael, Ally, and I ran into her house and slammed the door behind us--slamming the door on our days in the woods.

It is now ten years later, and we have yet to return to the woods. That experience scared us straight, and it was our last fire. Not long after that day, green signs were posted at every entrance to the woods. They read;

“ENTRANCE PROHIBITED BETWEEN THE HOURS OF

4PM AND 6AM. $1,000 FINE FOR ANY PERSONS FOUND

DURING THESE HOURS.”

To this day, whenever Lyndsay and I see those signs, we laugh. We are not sure if the KB gang is the real reason for them, but we like to think we played a large part in it. Afterall, the KB gang had ruled those woods for years, but the signs only appeared after one of our fires got out of control.

Years have passed, but that inner longing for the woods has not diminished for either of us. I run by it on a nightly basis and when the weather is especially nice and I can smell the trees, I still hear the woods calling my name. To return to those wild days. One day, I know Lyndsay and I will venture back there again; hands clasped and hearts aching for some new adventure.