My sister has given me a wonderful gift, in the last month. She brought me back to the place we grew up in, the playground of my youth. This is the woods behind the house I grew up in. It had as much to do with my formation as did growing in the womb. As I entered yesterday, immediately I felt a sense of it being a part of me, of home and of youth, of a letting go of the business of life and entering into rest and refreshment.

We picked our way through, locating the old paths, reminding ourselves of some of our old adventure and the silly things we used to do. For instance, picking snake grass and pretending we were smoking. How funny, that that would delight us so, and give us such a feeling of being grownup. We found the place we use to go across the creek on an old pipe. The younger ones scooching across on their fannies, and that sure sign of daring and maturity when you could walk across it like on a tightrope. They have put a brigde over it now, probably the age of lawsuits made them succumb. This is the place where we made up many tales of fantasy and played them out, where boys of the neighborhoods raced their minibikes that they built at home and would occasionally take us girls for a ride. This is where we learned about many animals, climbed our trees, made secret hiding places, hid buried tresures, had bonfires with our Dads in the fall, and ice skated in the winter and eventually had our first kisses and held hands with our first boyfriends. This is where the seasons of life were so fully formed in me that I couldn't imagine living anywhere else. I scoff at people who want to move south. To miss the beauty of and ice storm or that first fall of snows in the trees, the brilliant colors of the fall and the smell of molding leaves that have fallen and crunch beneath your feet. The warmth and love you feel by a campfire. The wonderful canopy of shade and cool on a hot summer day and the beauty and exitement you experience as you see the little green mist entering the forest after a cold winter. This is all home. This is the heart of me.