If you had to define your childhood by three things, what would they be? On my hike this morning with the dogs, I thought one would have to be my haircut. It has always informed my world in specific, and powerful ways. But, I just can’t play through on that one.
My red dirt bike, my black dog, and the woods.
The first two are, no doubt, self evident, but the third is the one with sweep. I think of childhood as tree forts, and hikes to the creek and the orange clay pools. I remember searching for turtles and frogs, dodging rattlesnakes, watching an owl pull a mouse apart. I remember the wildness of our adventures, a stone’s throw from the cul-de-sac of Gridley Loop. The trail that roped into the cottonwoods, the fishing holes, the echoes of our voices at the canyon.
I remember the exhilaration of experience. The iron taste of blood in my lungs when we’d sprint through the leaves. Skinned knees as we scrambled up the rocks. The light somehow hallowed.
Three things.
Moving House
The Way-Back
My Awareness
We moved a lot when I was a kid. New school for every grade til 7th.
My first brother and I were small enough to fit into the Way-Back of the Volkswagon bug and watch the trailor on the first several moves.
I grew up in the sixties and was so aware of everything. Eating dinner to the Viet Nam War, watching the man on the moon, reading Life Magazine before I could read and absorbing sooo much. Pretending to burn my ‘bra’ in fourth grade…wanting so much more than my life seemed capable of holding.