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!
gardens are my back yard office. Wonderful writing places, coffee places, sit with friends places, a bit of oasis, maybe my own secret garden which I don’t mind
sharing.
Celebrated my birthday with this energetic group. (And 7 more times with various other people and groups --- making me feel very, very old.) Plus... a ship comes under the lift bridge in cannel park during an evening break.
Lake Superior
Long dirt roads leading to (???) I don’t know where or really even why?
Augustana College.
Some can't avoid mud puddles at any age
squirt gun bandents at my door
It is looking like it will be a summer of odd pictures.
Here are the rules.
The Apple Blossom Run at Carpenter Nature Center.
Day out...
