Dead End
I grew up in a bucolic suburb of NYC. My family lived in a cul-de-sac. Just beyond our turnoff stretched fifty yards of pavement leading to an impassable wall of dirt, with wild woods beyond that. All the neighbors referred to this leftover, unused appendix of road as "the dead end."
That evil name frightened me as a young child. Then I'd hear stories of bad, scary teenagers doing illegal things over there. Ya know, sex and drugs. Riding my bicycle off my street always meant anxiously turning left, because going right immediately put you at the base of the dead end, and who knows what bullies or serial killers lurked in the trees?
I and the other similarly aged children in the vicinity became less afraid of that general area over time. We'd park our bikes by the dirt, maybe even dig at it a little bit. I first learned of the word "excavating." We looked for archaeological clues about what hooligans did around here - beer caps, cigarette butts, unidentifiable litter. Some kids clambered up to the top of edge of the jungle, but would quickly descend lest we'd get in trouble.
My older brother returned from playing with friends one day and said he explored the woods behind the dead end. No way! He had fantastic stories of trails, creeks with underground springs, and a rope swing dangling from a thick branch over a small hill with a giant pit of fallen leaves at the bottom. Okay I gotta see this for myself.
I followed him up the mound, took a deep breath, and entered the green beyond. He wasn't lying. This whole new secret world exploded into being. The bubbling spring blew my little mind. The swing filled my heart with the joy of awakened potential. Who slung that rope up high on that branch? What a brave genius! I'd have dreams for months, maybe years, about finding new alternative-reality features in this mysterious limbo land - visions of raging rivers, tall bridges, twisted trees, whole villages existing entirely off the grid...
What a joy having such a large, wild space to explore and hide! I'd return every so often with friends over the next few years and we'd enjoy flying off that swing and plunging into the deep pool of leaves. At one point I imagined that a demented person could leave something like a pitchfork buried in there, and that would be fucked. I refrained from jumping in after that.
And then we local children learned that the developers were coming. Rumors emerged about them converting the countless acres past the dead end into more houses. I felt betrayed. That secret, sacred land was ours!
My older siblings and some friends went on an expedition into the woods deeper than we had before to scope things out. And sure enough we stumbled upon a deforested section with unmanned bulldozers, heaps of dirt, and piles of two-by-fours and girders. After years of freely exploring this uninhabited area we felt like trespassers. We didn't belong here. How jarring and sad.
Suddenly we heard an engine approaching. Shit! From an obscured path came another giant vehicle. We didn't quite see it as we all scattered and hid. I remember laying on the ground out of view, like a soldier in a trench avoiding enemy fire. Eventually we all somehow communicated a plan to make a break for it, and we did.
As I entered teenagerhood I cared less about the dead end. Development moved along at glacial speeds, maybe even stalled completely, but the land still felt forever spoiled. I stopped having those exciting dreams involving alternative realities amidst the trees. Narnia had died.
After returning from freshman year of college a high school friend planned a party at his house. Having recently discovered alcohol, I wanted to arrive already drunk. Of course I couldn't drive like that, so I walked instead. The location of the gathering happened to be such that I could take a short cut through those woods. So I simply filled a used fast food beverage cup with a multi-shot vodka cocktail. I slurped on that as I entered the dead end at dusk and walked a mile or so through the increasingly foreign landscape - a quiet, lonely, solemn, meditative journey through the ruins.
I didn't have a good plan for the return trip that evening. I forgot to bring a flashlight and frankly felt too scared to go back the same way at 2am. Instead I stumbled down pitch black roads for a while, probably freaking out the few drivers passing by at this time of night.
A year or so later I came home from university and went exploring behind the dead end one last time with my younger sister. A few rich-people houses were fully erected by now, others remained in skeletal form during the throes of construction. I couldn't tell where the creek used to be, or that swing. All of that had been carved away. The landscape had been leveled, flattened into garages and blank backyards. I never returned.