I was poking around on my external hard drive today and I stumbled across all of my old written work from college. I read a few of them and, surprisingly, I actually liked what I saw. Here is one that I liked, more so for the end thoughts than anything else, and I hope you enjoy it enough that you didn't mind reading it.
To Battle the Elements
Who needs the city?
The musty smell of decaying leaves floated into my nose. I could taste the damp oak and maple leaves underneath my body. Be calm, be patient; I repeated these words to myself as I waited for Matt to come around the corner of the house. The flashlight in his hand created an eerie half light in the trees. Be calm, be patient. I remained still in my place among the brush. I slowed my breathing as he walked closer, blowing my breath into the cool ground to keep it from misting. I heard Matt walking into the trees, taking no time to be stealthy. Be calm, be patient. I shifted slightly to see him circling around behind me.
His grey winter hat was slightly illuminated as light from the moon filtered down through the pine trees. Suddenly someone gave a yelp and began crashing through the underbrush towards me. Tim sprinted out of the woods, his legs working furiously to outrun the hunter with the flashlight. As he disappeared around the corner of the house I wondered where Matt could be. A light rustling of leaves and a twig snapping brought my attention to my immediate peril. He had seen me and was trying to be clever and sneak up on me by facing the flashlight in the other direction.
Slowly I prepared to jump and gun it for the back porch. Rustle rustle… Snap. I waited for him to come closer, to let his guard down; let him think he has his prey. Snap, pop. Now. I threw my weight up and out of the bushes, accelerating as fast I could through the dark trees and underbrush. My pursuer let out a grunt and began to crash after me. Breaking clear from the trees I rounded the house and ducked for cover behind a tall bush. Matt came around and continued to run to the front of the house, missing me by mere inches. Yet another victory for me in the neighborhood league of flashlight tag.
Flashlight tag, the most basic and fun of nighttime games in my youth; a game unknown to a number of kids I met in my high school. After moving from a rural area to a slightly more urban one, this discovery puzzled me.
They had grown up in cities or sub-urban neighborhoods all their lives. Living on similar streets, in similar neighborhoods, in similar houses; they had nothing but pavement and small cubes of lawn to play on. Police sirens fill the air with their wailing call as well as the roar of planes and cargo trains.
The factory smoke and car exhaust would spoil the air, giving it an almost metallic taste and smell; the hard angles and corners, the dull shades of grey on the sidewalks and the buildings. The cold hard pavement in neatly drawn straight lines going in all directions. Having visited relatives in a neighborhood exactly like this as a child I have seen it all this first hand and still, the enjoyment of growing up in such a place eludes me. Sure, some enjoy living in a city but is this necessarily a good thing? Why would you want to have a child grow up around poverty, desperation, crime and pollution? The loss of innocence in these places is baffling.
They have no forests to run in, no crisp autumn mornings. They have no lakes to swim in, no ponds to fall in; no fishing holes. They have no wildlife, no benevolent shop keepers; no winding country roads, no trails to hike. They have no campgrounds, campfires or smores. They have no apples to pick, no fields, no farms.
It is the importance of these basic things that is frequently overlooked. You would never know how beautiful a spring sunset is, without being away from the towers of metal and stone.
Or know the feeling of playing in the woods all day, covered in dirt and grime, coming home to be scorned by your mother that you were out too long and stained your clothing. The sensation of walking barefoot on a carpet of leaves and soil; of feeling the cool mosses stick up between your toes. In a place like the city, these things may only be imagined, read in books or seen on television. It is the lack of these experiences that saps a child’s innocence. The rushing into the world of adults, with its responsibilities, hardships and tragedies, collapses the simple world of childhood. It is this universe of a child that needs preservation the most. Without this connection to the basic way of things through these purely aesthetic experiences, only the cold hard reality of adulthood is left to shape the young mind.
Imagine growing up fearing for your life at school, or dodging gangs of bullies while walking home; having to fend for yourself early in life, losing the protection of your parents in the busy grind of the city life. Where does the warm laughter of maturity come from, if not from adolescence? Where would our adult passions come from, if not from our worldly fascinations as children? It is the world we create for ourselves in the mystery of youth and the natural world that we should hold most dear to ourselves.