Oh...this rings very true with me. I had a haunt that was destroyed in just the same way. It was a den made by bushes and crowding tree branches, we spent lunchtimes there. Then it got chopped down.

Later on we had other haunts though, always starnge places :) While the other kids used benches and seat, we used to sit on the steps of the Sports Hall, or on the wall of a flowerbed, or in the school carpark...we weren't "allowed", technically, to sit in any of those places, so we kept getting moved...but we kept coming back anyway :)

Anyway I think you've really captured the feeling we all get when a favourite haunt is destroyed -- it's like a little bit of your past is gone and you know you can't get the same feeling back even if the trees grow again... loss of childhood, in a way.

Nice work, I hope this is part of a longer story?