Crunch … Crunch … Snap!
As I walk through the woods in Greensboro, NC I’m reminded of my childhood. There’s something about certain environments that transport you back through the filmstrip of your past.
I’m surrounded by vines, dead leaves, and empty trees. I am encompassed by nature. When I was in elementary school I lived in Gaithersburg, MD. There was nothing I loved more than going outside with my brother and the neighbors down the street. I’ll sound ABSOLUTELY ancient when I say this, but things were extremely simple then.
There were no cell phones, no Facebook, no Twitter. You had your friends. Not your social media networked friends, but the ones that lived down the street.
I know that I’m 25 and that it wasn’t that long ago, BUT it seriously was entirely different. Dear Lord, I’m teaching students who were born around that time!
We used to love playing simple games, but every now and again we would go adventuring. TJ and Kevin Sottek had an amazing backyard. It wasn’t large, but it was unique. It stretched 20 feet beyond the house and then dropped steeply about 30 feet. In the winter, sledding was amazing.
That hill led not to another house, not to a fence, but to an acre of bamboo. Countless hours were spent in our “castle” cutting and hacking away in order to make walkways. But this was more than just hanging out. We were formulating an cementing bonds for, what I had assumed to be life. As a kid, it made sense to me.
The best part about this bamboo is that I could travel from my backyard, through the woods on the right, past the next door neighbors, right into the bamboo. It was our own refuge from the world, from our parents, from the problems we thought were larger than life. It was our chance to escape and enjoy our own worlds, and our own rules.
Crunch, crunch, snap!
It’s moments like this that I live for. Moments that remind me of a more innocent time. Many of us trudge through life everyday weighed down by our stresses and responsibilities. It’s these moments that allow me to escape from that. As I sat there in the woods during the photo shoot I was a part of (one of those photos above), I got lost in a memory and the day got brighter and warmer.
Write about one of those moments where something transported you back into your childhood. What what the trigger? What was the moment? How did you feel?
amandaveinott
billymcgee
gacruz7
jhosack87
karilynne23
Your story reminded me of the big spot of undeveloped land in our neighborhood we called “the field.” Mostly it was weeds and a few random trees, but there was the “Big Tree” and the “Little Tree” as well as a canal. We ride bikes on the dirt hills and hang out by the trees all the time. We were wild out there.
Now it’s all neighborhood. All developed. There’s a power utility shed approximately where the Big Tree used to be. (They chopped it down. But it probably needed to come down. It had been burned and trashed so many times. I don’t even know how it still had leaves. Poor thing). But I liked that more of my childhood was spent out there rather than inside playing video games. I mean, they were still around, but since my bros were always hogging them, that left the outdoors. For me, it was probably a good thing.
Thanks for the trip down memory lane.
I love it!