Prairie Wanderings: Higgins Woods
By PAUL G. JANTZEN
Contributing writer
We called it Higgins' Woods even though the few honey locust and Osage orange trees were widely scattered in this Nebraska prairie. The unnamed creek that wound among the trees was stretched out and had running water only after heavy rains.
City kids were not welcome in the "woods" because they sometimes left gates open. But farmer Jesse Higgins trusted us Jantzen kids so we had free range in the two pastures where his lean, red and white Ayrshire cattle grazed. We thought they were handsome with their prominent curved horns.
The Higgins owned land on three sides of our seven-acre home. Later they bought farmland across the road on the fourth side.
When we walked through one of our brome grass patches to reach Higgins' woods, we would first encounter a grassy knoll from which we could see the creek valley stretched out before us. Immediately beneath the mound was a sandstone outcropping into which someone, long before anyone could remember, had hollowed a cavern possibly 12 feet in diameter. Legend had it that the cave had been used during prohibition days to brew or store illegal whiskey. Down at flood plain level, we could enter the west opening of the cave only by crawling on our bellies. The north entrance was intended as an upright entrance.
By now, erosion had washed sandy soil into the cave so even we kids couldn't walk erectly inside. When our eyes became accustomed to darkness, we could see a shallow tunnel leading further east into the sandstone. Our dog once explored that tunnel but when the dog returned he had obviously encountered a skunk back in the dark reaches of the tiny tunnel. That dampened our enthusiasm for further exploration.
In spite of the Higgins' inhospitable feelings toward visits by local town kids, the crowded names and initials carved into the bare outer exposure of sandstone suggested that dozens of folks had made their way to "Robber's Cave" as we called it.
Some days, we headed for the southwest pasture and its pond. On hot summer days, we enjoyed its cool, but very turbid, water. Sometimes our bare feet stepped on thorns from the Osage orange trees that had not been thoroughly removed during the construction of the pond. Those wounds became painful possibly due to some enzyme in the hedge thorns. But the handsome blossoms of purple poppymallow which graced this pasture, even in the hottest days, took our minds off the discomfort.
One late afternoon, as I wandered through this pasture alone, I heard a bobwhite announcing its presence from a fence post. Since this was a low quality pasture, quails were scarce here and I was excited. When the quail took flight, I took some droppings from the post to convince my family that I had actually seen and heard a quail.
In the northwest pasture, the creek swept past a ravine eroded into the wooded hillside. This ravine became our "hideout." Near the ravine was an elm tree which at some earlier time must have experienced a severe storm. The tree had folded over and split open on one side to display a convenient flat, horizontal surface about five feet above ground level. That platform became our lookout station. Into one wall of the ravine, we once dug a small cave with space enough for one or two of us.
But our spirit of adventure didn't lie dormant for the winter. One snowy January day in 1942, brother Ted and I took small sacks of grain on our homemade back racks and established a small bird feeding station west of our hideout and under an Osage orange hedgerow that separated Higgins' pasture from Walter von Steen's farm. The many tracks observed in the snow at a later date indicated that many birds took advantage of this supplement to their diet.
We were fortunate to grow up in a rich environment and a neighborhood that allowed us to explore our surroundings. No wonder city kids wanted to wander through Higgins' Woods, even though they were uninvited.
