The Past Is Always With Us

When I was a teenager, I used to cut classes and head out with my best friend Susan to an apple orchard in our town, right across from the high school. We'd while away the hours hiking the extensive trails in and around the orchard. We brought idyllic lunches of sage cheese and bread, and had picnics overlooking the entire Pioneer Valley from our orchard perch. In the fall we could pick up all kinds of windfalls -Macouns and Pauls Reds and Golden Delicious and my personal favorite, the later Northen Spys. In the spring, we felt as if the orchards bloomed cloud-like just for us. We had magical times in that orchard, times I thought for these many years could not be recovered, only remembered with great pleasure.

When I moved back to my home town, I expected that all my old stomping grounds would be paved or built ovwer with houses. But I've been re-discovering my past, in the fields behind the Middle School, where I first rode a pony (owned by a wonderful woman who let my friend Holly and I spend hours grooming and riding said pony, Misty, with not a thought of liability - to give you some idea of my ancientness). I've been wandering trails that are not yet vanished, only somewhat curtailed by development and dirt bikes in my own little neighborhood. But the apple orchard eluded me. Houses had been built around all the old entrances to the orchard, and although I knew it was still there, I couldn't get to it. I drove countless roads searching, and not finding, thinking it was lost to me forever.

But just a few days ago, I discovered that part of the orchard had been given over to a nature preserve. I did find the access roed, and took a phenomenal, nostalgic walk in one of my favorite places in the world. To most people, Rice's Fruit Farm couldn't hold a candle to the Grand Canyon, the cliffs of the west coast of Ireland, the views from the Presidio of San Fransisco Bay, but it is one of the homes of my heart. It brings me right back to my youth, when all things were possible.

So, this weekend, go back there yourself. You may not still live in your hometown, but re-experience something you once loved, that brings your childhood right back to you. Get some fingerpaints, ride a bike, color with your kid's Crayolas. Then draw it, write it.