Driving through Cedar Falls, not in a hurry this time, I turned off the freeway and found the familiar street names. My elementary school building was gone, replaced by a shinny modern looking building with the same name, Cedar Heights Elementary. The street crossing looked the same. I remember returning from lunch – home was half a block from the school – and trying to tell the crossing guards – much older kids – that I had just heard on TV that the president had been shot.
My hometown, the house I grew up in and had not been back to since 1976, it seemed quite surreal. But the real place of nostalgia was discovering the opening to the path in the woods just a block from the house had not changed. I stepped down the path with its familiar plants, smells, feelings of earth and numbers of mind-memory-tapes all playing at once. This was my playground, a world of nature waiting to be discovered. Here I walked with my mom, hid behind trees from my dog, glided down the slop on sleds, found my first arrowhead, learned to avoid the Chatman’s and the Kelly’s who I feared as the neighborhood bullies, learned to stay away from poison ivy, and leaned the names of most other plants in the woods.
Here time had not changed. I felt as if I was 10 years old walking into the woods just as if I had been there yesterday. The trail was an old friend, with the same slopes, and curves. I knew exactly which way to turn and walk on.
Walking on continues with both the familiar, and the new.
Blessings to all whom are journeying with me.
Thanks!
Gloria goes West!
