Remember when

As I sit at my computer, from my window I can see the sky change from amethyst to opal. The trees slowly fade from bright jade green to docile olive as the world fades around. 

When I was young, I would squeeze every single second out of the day, watching the sun slowly dip behind the Blue Ridge Mountains and feel the grass beneath my bare feet change from warm to cool silk. I could feel the spring air nip at my cheeks, reminding me that winter is never very far from any time in the year, and that no matter how hot and wet the Piedmont days would grow, a cool day was always off in the horizon. I would stay outside, running around the cool yard, illuminated by the floodlight and peering off into the black distance, listening for any cars or life out beyond my sight. 

The thought of what lay beyond the black horizon excited and frightened me. I could imagine a large black bear lumbering off in the woods, and I would picture a madman with long dirty hair and mossy green teeth gnarling at me, carrying an ax. Off in the distance I could hear animals walking through the fields, and long stems cracking beneath their feet. But no, they were madmen, axes in hand, bears lumbering off to get me.

I am now living in a city, but I will always be a country girl at heart, imagining the world beyond, dreaming of the extremes, and always wondering about the world beyond my own.  

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