Our property wasn't vast, but it was substantial: bean fields and corn fields at the bottom of the hill, the hill itself part of a pasture that had long since stopped serving any purpose, as my family no longer raised cattle. The barn with its stocks and milking machine, the chicken coop, so many things that were still there but no longer used, all part of my private playground. I didn't even know what these buildings were for, but they served my shifting purposes when I was five years old, or six or seven. They could be Nazi hideouts or Old West towns or Al Capone's Chicago. The only limits were my imagination.
Most of my surroundings I could bend to my will, but my favorite place on the farm was a row of evergreen trees that stretched in a perfect straight line west from the back of the barn. Beneath their branches, emerald-dappled sunlight softly touched the ground, and the grass was soft and matted, covered in needles. The branches, delicate but unyielding, also muffled sounds, even the familiar birdcalls and roar of passing autos were faint here, as if the rest of the world could be shut out, as if all the things I thought I knew didn't matter.
This was a place of absolute stillness and calm, a place for meditation and awareness of things more important than myself. Being there was almost like coming face to face with God, an experience both joyous and terrifying, and the feelings it evoked in me were almost more than I could handle. I would only go to this spot when I needed the quiet, but as a little kid, I tended to prefer the noise of the rest of my life.
Well, you can probably guess how the rest of the story goes: We sold off the farm piece by piece. The evergreens were torn down by our neighbor after he bought the adjoining pasture, which my dad okayed, so I'll never again see sunlight slanting through branches in shimmering shades of green. Things change, and good things disappear.
But sometimes, on the rare occasions when I find myself driving in the country, I'll stop at the top of a hill and watch the clouds dart across the sky, their shadows racing across the fields and fences and ditches and streams in the valley below, a reminder of how beautiful the world is, regardless of the people who inhabit it, regardless of whether anyone notices or cares.
