Reflecting on nature, my long lost friend.

As I read through Thoreau and also through Annie Dillard, I began to reflect on my own experiences with nature - most of which occurred in my childhood. Here, in flat and monotonous Corpus Christi, there are no secluded forests or strange wildernesses to explore. I should not be so harsh, I know that we have the beach, the marshlands, the fields that seem to stretch on forever. But we have no trees, no forests, no places to wander and get lost within yourself.

Until I was 10 and my great grandmother passed away, my mother, older brother, myself, and sometimes my father would fly out to Chesapeake Bay, Virginia for a few weeks in June every other summer. This trips seemed to me like the norm of my childhood and I look back on these trips with deep affection. Many of the memories from these trips define my childhood, more so than the years spent living as a childhood in Corpus Christi. I do not recall ever having a deep connection with the beach, the waves, or the rolling dunes. I do remember my favorite thing to do on those warm June evenings was to gather my brother along with a pair of mason jars and trek out into the seeming-forest of pine trees behind my Grandma Riddick's house and catch as many lightning bugs as we could. We would each fill our jars with the bugs as they glowed past our heavy breaths, igniting and then fading into the deepening, darkening evening sky. When we had filled our jars with enough light to be content, we would head back inside to the smells of dinner simmering. We would place our jars on the bedside table that separated our twin size beds. The bugs would serve as our night light. They were always dead by morning, but we felt they had served their due purpose.

My brother and I, always with the help of our beloved Grandma Riddick, would clear walking pathways through the fallen pine needles, mow the front lawn on her riding lawn mower, collect sticks and branches for the traditional bonfire - complete with smores, feed the horses behind her property - across a small wooden bridge (maybe 3 feet long) that spanned a small creek bed; this image, of the bridge and the field beyond it, is one that is definitive within my mind, my imagination, I think of it often - we would run through the fields behind her house to her friends' house, they had at least 20 bird houses and would always let us ride their lawnmower around with a wagon attached to the back. We were always outdoors, always exploring, always roving. I think the reason these memories stand out to me so vividly, they are some of the most meaningful and vivid memories I have of my childhood, is because they involved my deep connection with nature. The freedom, creativity, and energy I found in nature had a profound impact on me as a child. I miss those days dearly.