Here are a few things about Roxaboxen

“Marian called it Roxaboxen,” began the picture book found on my first grade classroom’s blue bookshelf. I also called it Roxaboxen. Alice McLerran’s Roxaboxen was set in the Arizona desert, while mine was nestled under New England pine trees. I wasn’t discouraged by these regional differences; instead, I drew inspiration from the children in Roxaboxen and created my own adaptations when necessary. Marian never laid eyes on my Roxaboxen, but I liked to believe she would be proud.

Though I spent my first years in Boston, my most vivid childhood memories take place in the suburb to which we moved when I was four. The transition from a city environment walking-distance from the Arnold Arboretum to a town filled with manicured lawns and fences was difficult for both my Manhattan-raised father and me. In the suburb, grass was not for running through; it was for decoration, pesticide-sprayed and marked with little yellow signs warning of poison. Wandering into a neighbor’s yard was not socializing, instead, it was trespassing. My yard was different. The crabgrass-spotted lawn was downright pathetic compared to the one next door but it was perfectly suited for childhood exploration. My curiosity led me beyond the rickety green chain-link fence lining the back of our property. A row of tall pines reached up a small hill bordering the backyards of the houses on my road. At the top of this hill under the shelter of the pines I found my Roxaboxen.

Before I go too far assuming all are familiar with Roxaboxen I figure some explanation is in order. In her book, Alice McLerran writes of the half-imagined, half-real play world of a group of friends. With rocks, old broken bottles, cactus, sticks, and boxes, the Arizonian youth construct an elaborate miniature town complete with a jailhouse and a graveyard. Their Roxaboxen includes a mayor, shops with storekeepers, and all the staples of a grown-up town. Barbara Cooney’s illustrations depict unbridled boys and girls utilizing their surroundings to create an almost magical community. To a child like me, such an existence was irresistible.

I wasn’t the first child to use this place. A rusted chain ladder hanging from a thick bough silently spoke of past children. I never learned any further identifying details of their story. From the top of the hill I could peer down into the yards beneath me and over to the large white house to which property lines had granted claim of Roxaboxen. I met the woman who lived in that house only once when a friend of mine tried to build a house with tall walls of logs. The commotion attracted the woman’s attention and violated one of my personal rules of Roxaboxen. I was allowed to shape the fallen pine needles into subtle house boundaries but I could not create too much of a disturbance in the natural way of the land. Unlike the more sculpted Roxaboxen of the picture book, my imagined town was to be mostly just that: imagined.

From Roxaboxen I borrowed the idea of a town in the wilderness, but I played more in solitude than my fictional counterparts. The occasional friend would join me in my woodsy getaway, but for the most part company existed within my head. I didn’t long for others, though. I wasn’t an anti-social child, but I found that my friends didn’t imagine Roxaboxen in the same way as I, nor could they find amusement in pine needles and rocks for as long as I could. My attention span allowed for hours spent sculpting my needled roads and mentally assigning names to the tree trunks and bushes that surrounded me.

Like any plucky New England girl I did not balk at cold weather, snow, or brisk winds. Roxaboxen existed in all four seasons, with each season bringing new projects. I’d bury acorns in the fall hoping to see tall oak trees come springtime. When spring finally arrived, I’d attempt to transplant crocuses from my garden into the rocky soil. Though winter snows buried most of my accomplishments, they gave allowance to snow-walls and snow-roads. Summer left me with endless expanses of free time to be filled by cultivating my imagined neighborhood. These seasonal changes only prolonged my entertainment. I imagine a Roxaboxen in Arizona would lack the variety given by my Massachusetts climate.

Consistent to Roxaboxen was the scent of pine, both the sharp smell of needles fresh off the trees and the earthy musk of the fallen ones rejoining with the soil. Mocking birds cooed in the juniper trees below the hill and blue jays cawed in the overhanging branches. A local cat would occasionally prowl through my village, stealthy and calico, seemingly oblivious to the jingling of its belled collar. Some days I would find Roxaboxen permeated with the distinctive smell of skunk, though I managed to escape any more personal encounters. When I envision Roxaboxen, my mind fixates on the color orange: orange pine needles, orange maple leaves, and deep rusty-orange bark on the evergreen trees. Thinking of Roxaboxen brings back the feeling of a comforting, peaceful seclusion. There, I was free to let the forces of my mind meet the forces of nature, to let them combine to create my joy.

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