Searching For...

…No, not a publisher. Though I’m always sort of searching for a way to get my writing out there, that’s not what I’m talking about this time. Nor am I talking about the great search that is on most people’s minds this time of the year. That I’ve kind of semi-permanently back burnered. No, my search was for something far less prosaic and practical, but just as passionate. (Alliteration FTW)

Today I went for a wander around my old old neighborhood today in Taftsville, the village I lived before moving to Rochester in the fourth grade. I've been edging my way towards exploring that area for a couple of weeks now, but I haven't actually stopped at the little general store/post office, and I haven't walked up the road on which I used to ride my bike (Happy Valley Rd) until today. I have fond if fuzzy memories of this place. A friend who lived down the road a piece who also happened to have an amazing tree fort. Getting penny candy at the general store. Roaming up and down the dirt road for hours and letting my imagination run just as wild as my bare feet could carry me.

Those memories are out of focus but silver and shining, like a daguerreotype of my early life, but there’s one thing that clearly sticks out. The field.

Perhaps every child has a magical spot all their own. A place that intrigues, engages, and maybe even frightens them. I was lucky enough to have several such places. The one that both drew me in and repelled me simultaneously was the field. It was off the most desolate part of the tree lined dirt road; one of the only spots where the light broke through the canopy. The field was bordered by these giant, two-hundred plus year old trees. Beyond them was a crumbling stone wall and then this vast, rolling hillside of soft golden grass (or blinding seamless white in the winter). The hill ended maybe three-hundred feet away from the road in a rich evergreen tree line, but when I was little it felt like miles of otherworldly open space. I could never quite place why, but I was always drawn to that field. There was something that tugged at me from the woods at the far edge, something intense and maybe a little dangerous. I was always too timid to ever explore it.

So today, having thought about this field since I was six years old, I went out to reclaim my memory. I wanted to find this spot that had called to me and wormed its way through my imagination for almost my entire life. Ultimately, I couldn't (definitively) find it. The neighborhood has changed. It's much more developed than it was when I was a kid. There are new houses and cleared areas I don’t remember. Perhaps even more obvious than the development, I could see where Irene took her toll (and she was so very cruel to central Vermont). After wandering up a hill (that was much steeper than I remembered) I came to a spot that tugged at me the way that field used to. It was covered in scrub now and almost unrecognizable, but my body wanted to run to the woods at the far edge the same way I did when I was small. Spoiler alert: I didn't. Mostly it was due to the glistening ice sheet that covered over a foot of snow, but it might have had something to do with that childhood fear that always kept me at bay. I think perhaps I'll go back in the spring and try to finally figure out why that field has followed me for years. It still haunts my dreams, and it still calls to me almost 3 decades later.