Crazy for "Forts"

It does seem that children need a feeling of security, of place. Cowboys, Spacemen, and Monsters always need a fort, a base of operations. We always liked to find secluded hiding places, or secret places of any kind. One of the favorites was between Main Street and Church Road. There is a fence line along which a long line of forsythias bushes grow. As forsythia grow, the branches arch over creating an umbrella effect. Planted along a fence line this becomes a tunnel. Such was the one that we played under.
Large outcroppings of granite boulders created hidden areas, hiding us from our imagined enemies. Sometimes, it was just a hand-dug hole in the ground, covered with sticks and leaves. Or a large broken tree limb that led up into a large tree. Or "found" building materials such as plywood, or house siding.
Once the base fort was established, and there were several, we would wage war on the other forts, carrying off parts of the other fortifications to reinforce our own.
Sometime around 1961, we had the best series of forts ever, when it snowed persistently through the Winter. On the playground of the Ellicott City Elementary School, we all built huge igloo styled forts with protective walls and areas for the manufacture, storage, and launching of snowballs. I recall with some fogginess, that this was encouraged by the school teachers, perhaps in an effort to use up some of the energy that we were all so full of every day.
Yes, we were all crazy about building forts in those days.