In a happy childhood, such secret nests can be a place of enchantment and magic, a place to escape the grown up world for a while.  I still like the idea of cosy places in nature or in a rambling old house; where you can take supplies of chocolate and biscuits, with leaves or pillows to rest on as you chomp and plan.

All children want to crouch in their secret nests.

See Arthur Ransome for another reference to children and secret places.

Source: Seamus Heaney, Finders Keepers: Selected prose 1971-2001 (London: Faber and Faber, 2003), p. 3

Photo credit: Annie Spratt at unsplash