A Long, Strange Walk

[llmart]

35. Beautiful writing!

It took me back to my youth where there were acres and acres of land my six siblings and I could roam and look for arrowheads and remnants of the past. No one stopped us with their "No Trespassing" signs, mostly because everyone knew everyone else's family. I grew up in a rural area and the people that owned the land thought nothing of having kids on it. We fished in their ponds with hand lines and grasshoppers that we caught in our hands. We ice skated on the pond in the winter when it froze over. We played imaginary games and learned all about the insects in the creek, made up stories about the treasures we found. There was no such thing as a season when you didn't go outside.

We lived in a 100 years+ old structure (it wasn't really a house) that had been a one-room schoolhouse in the 1800's. There were several outbuildings. A brother and I went back to visit our old house probably 40 years later and it still stands. We stood on the property (the new owners were fine with us doing that) and reminisced about our wanderings. We walked along the creek where we spent so many hours. Every single one of us is an outdoors person and we're all in our 70's now. I no longer even live in that state, but with the beauty of the internet I have been able to do some research on that house and the surrounding land.

So, thank you for allowing me to walk down your particular memory lane because you and I both know that at a certain age, we have plenty of memory lanes to walk down. There's a reason that people talk about the wisdom of age. Not everyone has it (think Trump), but some of us do.