Although for decades I’ve been living in a home surrounded by trees that is heated primarily by wood stoves, and I enjoy kayaking, mountain climbing, building stone walls, growing organic vegetables and many other active outdoor pursuits, the truth is I grew up not in a log cabin but in a quintessentially suburban community where the biggest excitement was playing Wiffle ball after school with neighborhood pals in a vacant lot amid hundreds of identical ranch houses.

Go figure.

One afternoon not long ago I found myself back in my hometown of West Haven with a couple hours to kill and decided to see if I could glean what may have inspired me to pursue an adventure-filled life. And so I parked my car near Chick’s Drive Inn, laced up my running shoes and set out on Beach Street past what had been the old Savin Rock amusement park.

A cop car pulled in behind a bush not far from me, and I watched the officer lean back and place his cap over his eyes. Same old West Haven.

Back then Savin Rock was a kid’s Valhalla: The Thunderbolt roller coaster, Mill Chute, Wild Mouse, Peter Frank’s Fun House, bumper cars, Jimmie’s hot dog stand ...

Though part of me lamented the waterfront park’s slow decline and eventual demolition after I went away to college and settled in southeastern Connecticut, I was thrilled to see construction of a picturesque and popular pedestrian/bicycle path that hugs the Long Island Sound shoreline. On any given day it attracts crowds of strollers, runners, bikers, kite-flyers, picnickers and others simply enjoying the water view.

On my 6-mile ramble down memory lane I loped past a group of old men playing bocce ball, young mothers pushing baby carriages, dog-walkers, construction workers taking their lunch break, texting teens, and fishermen carrying poles and tackle boxes en route to piers and jetties.

The beach season had ended so the lifeguard stands stood empty, but during summertime in my teenage years, when I worked the night shift at McDonald’s and later the Cott’s Bottling Company, I spent most of my daylight hours there playing the card game pitch with my buddy Rocky Tremblay, then a lifeguard and now a physics professor who I still get together with for poker, not pitch.

Rocky accompanied me in one of my first adventures when the two of us rowed my 8-foot wooden pram across Long Island Sound from Port Jefferson, N.Y. to Milford, leaving at midnight. I forget what prompted me to launch such a crazy teenage mission, but I still have nightmares about the huge shark that menaced us in the pitch black halfway across; of the submarine that passed within 100 yards, submerged except for its conning tower; and of the fusillade of gunfire that greeted us when we inadvertently strayed close to a shooting range the next morning after we had been rowing all night.

I since have kayaked across Long Island Sound several times, paddled its length solo and also circumnavigated Long Island by kayak.

The shoreline sidewalk on which I had been running gave out near South Street – “the hippest street in town,” according to the 1963 hit by the Orlons — and so I veered into the West Shore neighborhood past my old grammar school, Seth G. Haley Elementary, where I broke my nose for the first time as a first-grader while playing tag. I would break it again just before graduating high school after crashing my bike.

I also broke my collarbone as a toddler when I was curious about how windshield wipers worked, so climbed onto the hood of the family Chevy parked in our driveway and toppled to the pavement when I heard my parents coming out the back door.

On another preschool misadventure I released the emergency brake on that same car, allowing it to roll free. When my mother looked out the living room window and saw our car in the middle of the street she raced outside, giving me enough time to dash back in and lock the doors.

A mailman had to climb in through a kitchen window and upon unlocking a door he rolled his eyes and told my mother, “Mrs. Fagin, you don’t know the half of it.”

Apparently I had used those few moments to scribble all over the walls with a crayon.

I guess I was a difficult child.

There was nobody home the other day when I knocked on the door of our old house, but I was delighted to observe that the tool shed I helped my father built still stood in the backyard, as did a maple tree I remember seeing as a kid being planted by a landscaper.

“One day you’ll look at this tree and remember how I carried it here on my shoulder,” the man promised. He was right.

I think of that tree every spring when I plant hundreds of seedlings on my own property to replace the ones I cut for firewood.

Resuming the run, I retraced my route to the beach and was surprised to realize how close to the water we had lived – less than a mile.

Back then it seemed such a vast distance that walking to the beach would have been like Hannibal crossing the Alps. My mother, father, sister Diane and I always had to pile into the car, lugging inner tubes, coolers filled with drinks and sandwiches, folding chairs, umbrellas, towels and enough pails and shovels to outfit the Army Corps of Engineers.

Having since run in dozens of marathons and tramping thousands of miles over mountain trails as high as 20,000 feet, a mile stroll to the beach or any other destination seems laughably insignificant.

On my running visit I was pleased to see the old Wiffle ball field was still a vacant lot, and recalled it also had been the scene of my first rock-moving project.

A large boulder there had been situated at the base of a hill where we kids would go sledding, and at least once a winter some hapless rider would slam into it with his Flexible Flyer. So I organized a pint-sized construction crew armed with picks and shovels, and we spent an entire Saturday digging a big hole next to the rock, pried it loose with a 2-by-4 and triumphantly shoved it underground.

Loyal readers and visitors to our home realize that moving big rocks remains one of my favorite pastimes. Just the other day, in fact, I unearthed two table-sized slabs of fieldstone with a mattock and pry bar, and dragged them about 100 feet to use as the finishing touches of a wall and stairway extension. It was just as satisfying as moving that first boulder.

By the end of the West Haven run I realized my childhood escapades, no matter how modest, certainly shaped my adult adventures.

Upon returning to my car I peeked behind the nearby bush.

Sure enough, the cop was still dozing.