Freewrite - Bamboo

Across the street from my old friend's high standing house was a deep bedded bamboo forest.

High standing house? What do I mean?

If you stood at street level his house, and the lot that it was built on, was probably 30 feet higher than your eye level. I've never seen anything like it again but the street itself ended in a stream of wooden railroad ties.

These railroad ties were stacked one on top of the other so that street ended in a vertical drop. As you can imagine, it was not a street that connected to the others.

Source: Pixabay.com

When you stood at the edge of his land, on the top railroad tie, you could look down on the street below and see the cars passing as though they were tiny versions of themselves. It was pretty neat.

You could also see what existed on the other side of that street. There were a variety of different things, but one thing that really stuck out was what appeared to be a small forest of bamboo.

One day when my friend was not home I decided that I would cross the street to see what the bamboo forest was all about. I thought that it would be a very shallow forest. In fact, I thought maybe it would be just a very small outcropping with a few pieces of bamboo surrounding perhaps some mud and grass.

It was not.

Once I pushed the few pieces of bamboo aside and stepped into the forest it was like looking into a magical wonderland. I couldn't believe how far I was able to walk inside the forest. It felt like I had walked for almost a mile. Not an ounce of the outside world existed in here.

I walked, and walked, and walked.

Finally I found a place where I could sit down. It was a small semi circle of leaves with a barren floor. I'm not sure what caused me to do this but I decided it would be a good idea to start digging in the soft dirt that was nearby.

I dug, and dug, and dug some more.

To my incredible surprise, I felt something metal with my two front fingers.

A watch. A gold watch.

I was too young to know anything about brands or what kind of things you really look for in a gold watch but I knew that it was valuable.

So what did I do?

I buried the watch in the same hole that I took it out of it, and replaced all the dirt making sure it was well hidden and dug in tight.

That watch must have belonged to somebody, I thought. They will likely want it back. Besides, finding buried treasure is pretty cool, but somehow in my mind I knew it belonged to someone else and I wasn't about to take this beautiful forest and turn it into something terrible. So I left it there.

I visited the forest one more time after that, and then never returned.

Is it still there today?

I have no idea. I might decide to drive by there pretty soon though to check it out.

I'm curious if the watch is still buried.