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Age 4 or 5. It’s spring and my family is walking through Goll Woods, a nature preserve in Ohio. Some parts of the preserve have dirt paths carved through them, but it is otherwise pretty close to how it would look if humans weren’t around. There’s no gift shop or bathroom. Just a gravel parking lot and a few trails that loop around for walkers. “Stay on the trai,l” my father said. It would be so easy to step off of it to see the pretty flowers in the woods, but I listen to him. The woods are one of the prettiest things I’ve seen in my short life, all covered in flowers after a long winter.
Age 7. We live in Wyoming now, and it is summer. The mountains are so filled with snow that we generally can’t drive up there between mid-autumn and mid-spring, but our summer day trips up there are mild and beautiful. I’m standing next to a crystal-clear lake in this memory and looking at the Rocky Mountains looming above the water. There is still snow up in the mountains even this late into summer, but there is no more ice or snow on the lake. It has melted, although the water is so ice-cold you wouldn’t want to swim in it even in July or August. We have a picnic lunch by the lake, and the world feels peaceful and happy.
Age 11. We have just moved back to Ohio because my father had just been hired to be a pastor there. It was a decent-sized church for a rural place, about 200 people or so. I’m thrilled to live close to my maternal grandparents again and am running around their farm to see what has changed since our last visit. The wooden swing down by the creek is gone now, probably because either the wood or the rope was too rotten to be safely used anymore, but the barn cats are still prowling around, Grandma’s garden is growing nicely, and there are a lot of pretty flowers growing in the woods and out behind the barn where my grandfather doesn’t mow due to how many old pieces of farm equipment have been stored there. In this memory I keep running until I’ve inspected every bit of the farm that children are allowed to visit alone there.
So many of my happiest memories from childhood involve nature! How about all of you?
1. “If a black cat crosses your path, it signifies that the animal is going somewhere.”
Title: Fallow
1. A full-body massage from a professional masseuse.
Title: The Case of Elmwood Ranch
I love them!
Title: Galatea