What's in a name? | Wonderland Forest, Suffolk

It's as though Robin Hood and Little John got sidetracked on their way to Sherwood and ended up in the wrong forest.

Maybe it was the chunky cane brake rattlesnakes that crawl across roads, the deer staring from thickets or a big black bear that caused the merry men to go astray.

With street names like Robin Hood Trail, and Little John and Buckingham roads, what might have been Sherwood Forest - back in the late 1960s - became Wonderland Forest.

The roads are skirted by deep ditches, a slightly smaller version of the network that crisscrosses the nearby Great Dismal Swamp. The story goes that the neighborhood got its name because, when it rains, you wonder where the land went, a resident once said.

The 60-home subdivision's secluded location is really in the middle of everything - located exactly seven miles from downtown Suffolk and seven miles from Chesapeake Square mall.

But it's situated about a half-mile off Nansemond Parkway, surrounded by thick woods, on the edge of the swamp.

Wonderland Forest, because of an agreement with the original developers, is the city's only community with unpaved roads.

And still, things like water and sanitation - wells and septic tanks - are gifts from the earth beneath the collection of small homes, log cabins and mobile homes.

"I'm standing here, washing my wife's car, with my own water, from my own well, and the soap I'm using is environmentally friendly," said Barry Drum-wright, a retired Norfolk transplant.

Gerald O'Dell, a retired military man, calls the forest a neighborly place.

"If you're out working, it's not long before you hear an old pickup pull up, and you've got some help," O'Dell said.

Many residents own tractors and/or backhoes. They maintain their own roads. There's a "ditch day" coming soon, said Ann Sarratt, a retired civil service worker. If the ditches get clogged, the property floods. Some residents pay a neighborhood fee of $15 a month for road rock. Some don't.

Maybe Robin Hood and Little John just stopped in and liked the place, Sarratt said. Truly, nobody seems to know why the Wonderland name came about.

But a place where snakes grow fat, bears roam free, neighbors help neighbors and potholes are eventually repaired is kind of a wonder.

Linda McNatt, (757) 222-5561, linda.mcnatt@pilotonline.com