I had the surreal experience of receiving a tour of the home I grew up in, as conducted by my niece. This seems odd. However, for her, it’s just good manners. She couldn’t completely conceptualize that I was once her – tip toeing through the same cool grass, burying my feet in the same lush dirt of the same well tilled garden. To her, I was an outsider – a visitor from a far land.
She called this place home since my brother inherited it, after my father’s passing. Her room was my room when I was her age. Only now it’s painted the most vibrant and alive green I’ve ever seen on a wall.
It was a bit like seeing myself again as she enveloped herself in the mystery and natural possibility this acre and a half had to offer. There are countless bugs to be analyzed, four leaf clovers to be found, bird nests to be discovered in trees upon trees. It’s the stuff Thoreau spoke of , only she doesn’t know it because she’s eight and too busy being eight to think about naturalism. (Even Thoreau was harkening back to a purer state as experienced in childhood.) Yet, for her, it’s just the world as she knows it.