I spent my childhood in the mountains. Some years, we would get one group of trick-or-treaters that my dad most certainly scheduled. I can neither confirm nor deny that my mom passed out candy collected the previous Halloween. And to Granddad’s credit, he would load us up into the green VW camper bus and drive us around the mountains from house to house. It took a long, long time jumping in and out of that sliding door and trooping up driveways while our neighbors foraged through their pantries looking for something suitable.
So then I grew-up and moved to town… and straight to Halloween Heaven. We moved-in in October and fortunately, a neighbor casually came by to warn us about Halloween. “Has anybody warned you about Halloween?” 750+ trick-or-treaters later and we were sufficiently warned…
Then we decided to act on our years and years of planning and moved… back to a mountaintop. Jacob’s very first and possibly only objection: “What about Halloween?”
James certainly does not need a compelling reason to purchase a vintage VW van… fortunately, we heard through the grapevine that our neighborhood celebrates with an evening potluck and trick-or-treating hayride through the canyon.
We’re now recovering from three back-to-back nights of Halloween carousing… it started with a fantastic Halloween carnival at Henry and Ollie’s house, followed by an invite only evening of costume cacophony at the Country Club with Evan and Dillon, leading-up to the much anticipated hay ride driven by a dinosaur.
This year’s hay ride was apparently the largest haul of children in its thirty year history. I tried to keep up with the tractor but finally realized I hadn’t worn the right footwear and returned to the parents-only fire pit. Fortunately the black ninja dragon slayer and the helmet-less clone made it back alive… and did not return 12-feet up in the bucket of the tractor.
All in all, our social cup runneth over. We may be the only house in the neighborhood with Halloween decorations, but that just makes our DANGER tape and spider webs that much more impressive. This weekend James and I also took a daring hike around or entire property, primarily along a precipitously unofficial deer trail. Just down from the tree house James exclaims, “What is that?”
I see some sort of tall box in the woods– is it a safe? A telephone booth? Let’s hope we aren’t about to solve any unsolved missing college coed cases. James cautiously approaches the unidentified grounded object and… it is… an outhouse. Straight out of Blair Witch.
How scarily fitting.
The Blair Witch Outhouse