Down the hill on gravel, across Coon Creek, through a stock gate, and into the bottomland. Leaving behind our house exposed in the cornfield at the top of the plateau, we have entered the kingdom of trees and water.

This plot of land carries an old windmill, the overgrown foundation of a long-gone home, a new shed with a lock on the door, and two small, dingy signs proclaiming it a wildlife habitat, open to the public. Since the property rests one mile south of Milford, Nebraska, in the same section as the town dump, it is likely that we, my brothers and sisters and I, are the only public who have ever taken notice. Somebody hunts the property maybe once a year; no doubt the landowner's tax return accounts for it precisely each year. Otherwise, the land is open to us.

Trees hug the sides of Coon Creek in a familiar tangle of species: hackberry, honeylocust, elm; boxelder, bur oak, swamp willow; redcedar, chokecherry, shining sumac. A massive cottonwood marks the northeast corner of the property and serves as home base for our paintball games or the starting point for our expeditions. As the summer grows high, ventures into the property must be conducted in long sleeves, to ward off the tangled undergrowth of stinging nettles, burdocks, sticktights, and roses. From a slope by the road, we gather tiny sour sumac berries to make a summer beverage; from the bank by the creek, we dig daylilies for our mom's garden.

Coon Creek hooks under the road and through the property. Mostly too shallow even for minnows, its six-foot banks are a slick of clay and a fester of rank vegetation in summer. We dangle our feet off the edge of the bridge, arms over the weathered steel guardrail, and drop orange rocks into the one deep pool. Further into the property, we explore clefts and ripples in the land drawing down to the creek. With high, curving walls and fallen branches over the tops, these clefts make us feel we are spelunking, descending into the depths of the earth.

In winter, we tromp booted over the fields and walk along the bottom of the creek for what feels like miles, everything white and strange around us. We feel like children in a story who go through a door and enter another world. Yet somehow the magic kingdom is also our familiar home.

I graduate high school and my visits to the property become less frequent. Not long after, a young family purchases the land. They build a new, large house. The windmill and the wildlife habitat signs come down. They are pleasant people, warm and friendly if you pass them on the road, and I am glad for their two little boys to have the run of the site. Still, I never pass it without a sudden impulse to stop my car, jump the fence, and plunge headfirst into the undergrowth.