One of the reasons we chose our home over 26 years ago was that it was being built on a very special street, one that backed up to a park…

…a 100 acre wood, if you will.

As kids of all ages know, the One Hundred Acre Wood is home to Winnie the Pooh and all his friends, and the setting for the beloved stories about his adventures there.

The Hundred Acre Wood is based on an actual place called the Five Hundred Acre Wood, situated in the Ashdown Forest, in East Sussex, England, where A. A. Milne was living when he wrote the books. 

Today, areas of this wood have been named after locations seen or mentioned in Milne’s Pooh books, as a tribute to the author, including a bridge identified as the Poohsticks Bridge, and an area designed as the Enchanted Place. There is also a memorial plaque dedicated to both Milne and Ernest H. Shepard, who illustrated the classic books.

During our children’s early years, the stories of Winnie the Pooh were read and reread by my wife and I, and then read by our children on their own. It was an easy leap of imagination to think that our “One Hundred Acre Wood” was the same as Winnie the Pooh’s, meaning adventures of all kinds were to be found there.

And so they did, discovering adventures in the woods or making them up with friends.

Now, our children have moved away. Their children have been introduced to Winnie the Pooh and his friends. Our children may or may not remember our “One Hundred Acre Wood,” but you can be sure that when their children come to visit Nina and GrandBob, they will introduced properly.

Then again, maybe we’re rereading the stories for ourselves.