I loved where I grew up.
There were vast fields of soybeans, corn, or wheat depending on the year. Silos that were dangerously tall (and fun) to climb. Deep ditches filled with crawdads in the summer and ice in the winter. My brothers and I would hop from ice chunk to ice chunk, which was a dance with death we didn’t know we were dancing. I’d play in the drain pipes under each driveway on our street and wade through the ditches in the summers. Hike out to the lone trees in the middle of the fields for some peace and quiet and the joy of being all alone with myself.
I named every tree in my yard and was friendly with them all. I just knew that the trees forming an arch at the edge of the lawn and field were a doorway to another world, if I could time walking through it at the right moment.
There was this tiny patch of violets that grew every spring on the side of the garage, and I’d hand-build a fence around them (made out of sticks, of course) every year so my dad couldn’t mow over them. Violets are still my favorite flower.
I taught myself to climb my favorite tree with my eyes closed, in case I ever went blind. It mattered to me that climbing that tree was something I could still do (I read a lot of LM Montgomery, okay? It created a vivid imaginal experience in my daily life). I’d nestle into those branches with a book or the black spiral notebook I wrote in constantly. She was a red maple named Vicky, and the best tree I’ve ever known.
I wrote my name in the driveway, in the dust and scattered gravel, like Sarah from Sarah Plain and Tall. I wanted to be bound to that land, to know I belonged to it and it to me.
We moved to the city when I was 17.
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