Wilderness
(I have a blog somewhere else. I write a bunch of garbage there. I skimmed through it to try to find something presentable enough for a writing sample for a job interview. So hard. This is the best I came up with.)
I was a child of the 70s, raised on goats’ milk and bad TV. My fantasy family was Hawkeye Pierce, Daisy Duke and Laura Ingalls. In real life we lived on thirteen acres of land surrounded by rivers, state forest and cow pastures in Northern Minnesota and not even BJ and the Bear could keep me inside for long.
I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t allowed to play on my own, wandering aimlessly through the woods for hours. I followed my imagination as far as my legs would take me, perfected the trick of shimmying through barbed wire and electric fences, hunted for treasure in collapsing old cabins and climbed sap-sticky jack pines.
I even had my own island. Technically, I guess, it belonged to my family, but none of the rest of them had any use for it. It wasn’t much more than a marshy clump of mud that sat in the river that bordered our land, covered with waist-deep grass and birch trees. I staked my claim. In my mind it was a special, secret place all my own. During the summer I’d wedge myself in the crook of a tree, eyes on the horizon, watching for invaders from upriver. In the winter I would ice skate around my island until I was numb. More often than not, misjudging the thickness of the ice and plunging one leg into freezing water up to my knee.
My mother must have had nerves of steel, trusting that I would come home in one piece at the end of the day.
Now that I am a mother, it makes me sad that my kids don’t have that. We do, at least, have a yard, but there is no wilderness—no trees to climb, no river to ford – just a somewhat manicured lawn and a swing set surrounded by a tall, wooden fence. They make the best of it, using their imaginations, but Spongebob Squarepants is calling from the house, and I want more for them.
Eric and I have been talking lately about the possibility of buying a house together. This morning on the way to school, I asked Lucas what kind of a house he’d like to live in. He looked out the window for a minute and finally answered that what he wanted was to live in a big white house out in the country, with birds singing and a train going by.
So do I, kiddo, so do I.
