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Essay: Escape

ivan kmit
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If you grew up with siblings, quite often they also served as your friend, confidant, and playmate.

For essayist and Lake Effect contributor Lauren Groh - who you know from her Appalachian Trail updates - her sister was one of the first people she explored the outdoors with – primarily in their childhood tree house:

When I was a kid, I spent summers with my little sister. There weren’t many neighborhood kids, and we were only three years apart, so we spent a lot of time together. We developed similar interests at similar times. We would obsess over movies like The Sandlot and spend hours playing Crash Bandicoot on PlayStation. We’d battle each other in Rummy 500 and dominoes. We’d play catch and ride our bikes. We’d have roller blade races! On windy days, we’d exploit the nose of our family dog by playing “find the family member” with a piece of clothing.

But one of our favorite activities involved a tree house my dad built for us with scrap wood and his bare hands. We never had a name for that activity, but looking back, I can only think to call it “escape”. I can’t imagine why we’d want to escape. There wasn’t really anything to escape from, other than boredom. We didn’t live near any parks or community centers, and as I mentioned before, there weren’t many kids in the neighborhood. We had a house, two parents, a cat, a dog, and plenty of space to run around. It was all pretty normal. Nevertheless, we often wanted to escape to that tree house.

We’d pack our bags and lug loads of stuff out to the island of trees, where the tree house was. It would take multiple trips to get everything just right. It wasn’t close, either. We had a big yard, and the tree house was on our land’s border. We used our self-built pulley system to get things up there. We thought we were so cool!

Once we got everything set up, we would spend hours out there reading books and crocheting never-to-be-completed blankets, listening to music, playing cards, writing in our journals, or drawing pictures. We’d joke around and fight, and joke around and fight some more. On hot days, we’d bring our sleeping bags and stay the night.

I’ve been living back in the house I grew up in for the last year, but I don’t often have time, or make the time, for things like that anymore. Things are different, now. The tree house is long gone, and so are our family pets. I’m the only original occupant that lives here, at-the-moment. My sister and I grew up and have our own lives. I’m married and have two cats. I work a full-time job and I have adult responsibilities, but I still like to play “escape”, from time-to-time.

After college, I followed love to England. Together we moved to China, and eventually back to America. Currently, I’m plotting a radical 6-month escape. I’ll be spending the whole summer (and then some) on a two-thousand-mile backpacking trip on the Appalachian Trail, with the love of my life and partner in crime – my wife. I am lucky to have found a person who likes to play “escape” as much as I do, but I’ll never forget my original “escape” partner – my little sister.