Hidden Valley

Discussion in 'Other Reminiscences' started by Ken Anderson, Feb 21, 2019.

  1. Ken Anderson

    Ken Anderson Senior Staff
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    Across the road from where I grew up in Wallace, Michigan was a woods. This was a pretty large wooded area, with a river the size of a creek (Little River), that wound its way through it, so that if you were walking in a straight line, you'd cross the river a couple of times.

    The part of the woods that we'd access from our neighbor's field was known as Hidden Valley, although it was actually a small hill or at least a slight incline.

    There were a couple of things that were magical about Hidden Valley. One I won't spend much time on here because I've discussed it elsewhere in the forum a few years ago, and that is that a portion of the town used to be there. The same summer as the Chicago Fire, there was a fire in Peshtigo, Wisconsin that led to the loss of a lot more lives than the Chicago Fire, and Wallace also burned.

    Because the railroad had come through more than a mile away, most of the town rebuilt along the tracks rather than where the town used to be, so there were old foundations of houses in the Hidden Valley woods, a few walls still standing, and one of those railroad handcarts on a section of an old railroad spur. There were also orchards gone wild, so there would be (now) wild grapes and several fruit trees. No inhabited houses remained there.

    The other thing that was so magical about the Hidden Valley woods was that it changed so much from one year to the next, largely because of beaver activity, I think. Large parts of the woods were wet, and it included a large area of dark, dismal cedar swamp that was kind of spooky.

    The area where we'd enter the wood was between two large trees. There would be a trail there, but it was an animal trail rather than a hiking trail, and it wouldn't take you to the same place the following year.

    A large area of the woods was swampy (beavers) but, following an animal trail through the swamp, which kept us on reasonably dry pieces of land, we came across a slight hill. The southern part of the UP doesn't have a lot of hills, and this probably wouldn't be considered an actual hill, but there was an area of higher ground, where things weren't wet or dark. There was sunlight, and birds, butterflies, and flowers.

    My older brothers may have known the area better than I did, or maybe not. I didn't talk to them about it because they always acted like they knew what they were talking about even when they didn't. But I think that little hill was the part of the woods that was generally referred to as Hidden Valley because I do know that everyone said that Hidden Valley was actually a hill. My friends and I referred to that whole part of the woods as Hidden Valley.

    Anyhow, we were about ten or so when we found the hill in Hidden Valley. That spring, we began hauling lumber and building materials out there and we built a shack. We played there that whole summer, sleeping several nights in the shack.

    However, the following spring we could no longer find the hill. The trail took us somewhere else, and I never saw the hill or our shack again, and we spent several hours searching for it.
     
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  2. Patsy Faye

    Patsy Faye Supreme Member
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    Sounds magical - I wonder if beavers took a liking to your shack ………….
     
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  3. Joe Riley

    Joe Riley Supreme Member
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    From the movie O' Brother Where Art Thou, this is the song Lonesome Valley, by The Fairfield Four.
     
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  4. Shirley Martin

    Shirley Martin Supreme Member
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    That's a great story, @Ken Anderson. You are a superb storyteller.
     
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