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PFAFFTOWN -- We pushed through the final few yards of underbrush, watching the ground before each step into the swampy muck that let us know we were close.

The briars and honeysuckle were thicker now as we managed to grab one last handful and pull it apart, creating an opening like a window into another time.

And then there it was. The pond. Exactly as we'd left it. Twenty-five years ago.

We peered through the wild rose and blackberry out across a perfect scene, framed by thorns and vine, a three-acre mirror reflecting towering tulip poplars and river birch. We just stood and stared. It was beautiful.

My buddies and I used to hike back here years and years ago. We'd slip out of the neighborhood, send our dogs into the woods and then follow after them. Sometimes we packed a lunch. Sometimes we carried a cooler along. We were known to lug radios and stuff extra cigars into our pockets.

Fishing was different then. We were young and bullet-proof. And we had a pond nobody else in the entire world knew about. We'd trudge through two or three miles of heavily wooded land, following animal paths to landmarks only we knew to look for. The fallen pine across the sunken road. The abandoned cabin, its roof caved in long before we were even born. The vast fern pasture. The creek.

It was the creek that got our attention all those years ago. One of the fellows assured us that by following the slow, trickling stream, we would eventually come to a swamp. And if we were lucky...

The day we discovered the pond we made a solemn oath. We would mention it to no one. There were three of us there that morning in the summer of 1983. All these years later, I'm the only one left. I think Jimmie lives in Denver now. Mark lives in heaven.

Over the course of that summer, and many that followed, we made many trips back into the woods. We'd fish for hours, catching giant bass and catfish and bream. We'd deal with copperheads and snapping turtles and a red-tail hawk that never got used to sharing the pond with us.

We chased off flocks of geese, cleared out beach heads and fished for hours and hours, day after day after day. Radios blaring and cigar smoke hanging in the air and not another soul around us for miles.

I thought of those days as I drove through the old neighborhood Saturday morning. I saw an old friend mowing his lawn and got out of my car. I asked him if I could walk down to the bottom of his property to see if an old path entrance was still there.

"That path you guys always took carrying all that fishing equipment?" he asked.

I smiled sheepishly.

"Yeah," I said. "I guess we weren't too sneaky, huh?"

He laughed, said I was welcome to walk through his yard anytime I wanted to. And so I did. I asked him if he wanted to take a walk.

We pushed through the pines that blocked the old trailhead, and there it was. The path was still there, covered in pine needles but distinct as ever. We followed it into the dark woods, winding through suspicious underbrush, swatting down spider webs and watching our feet as we walked.

We passed under the old pine, still hanging over a sunken road we once imagined was formed by the Saponi and the Pee Dee, local Indian tribes who first settled the land in the Yadkin Valley.

We looked at the old cabin, still standing in a state of partial collapse, walked through the fern pasture and finally reached the creek.

The muck was over our ankles when we finally found the massive briar patch that swallowed what was a crude footpath even in its pristine condition 25 years ago. I pulled a few vines aside, tearing scars into my hands as my old friend stood back and watched.

"What's in there?" he asked.

I kept pulling and clearing.

"Would you come help me?" I said. "This stuff is thick."

"This better be good," he said.

Finally, when we tore through the last thick strands, I stuck my head through and saw it.

"There," I said. "Take a look at that."

He had a smile on his face, along with some blood where a branch had slapped him across the forehead somewhere along the way. He didn't say a word. He just stared.

After a while we stepped back and looked at each other. We were covered in scratches and dried blood and mud and beggar lice, and we stood there and grinned at each other like we were kids.

"So this is where you were headed all those times," he said. "I never knew what was back here."

"Nobody does," I said. "Only you."

Then we turned and walked back, following the landmarks to the old neighborhood.