Opening Scene of my Memory

I remember being a kid and not understanding the science of our world. It was impossible for my young brain to understand the explanations behind everyday occurrences. Something as simple as a light turning on by the flip of a switch baffled and fascinated me. When you are an infant, you are oblivious to such a cause and effect. As you grow up some, you are more interested in the cause than the effect. And then you hit a certain age, and you find yourself curious about the process of the cause. For instance, my sister and I would play in our backyard with the basic principles of physics, and not even know it. We used to take a bucket of dirt, swing it over our heads, and not a speck would fall out. I couldn’t comprehend an explanation, other than magic, that kept that dirt in the open bucket—upside-down. But I knew I wanted more of an explanation than fantasy.

I spent my elementary school years living in Monument, Colorado. We lived on an acre of land up the side of a hill. Our driveway up to our house was a quarter of a mile long. In the summers, my sister and I would play outside in the dirt. We would fill buckets with water from the hose and then add dirt and weeds until we created our own special “soup.” We’d map out spaces between the trees where our houses were, and we’d play neighbors. The yard around our house was natural. It wasn’t a perfectly cut lawn, or neatly manicured shrubbery, which made it an optimal playground for little kids. Anything could happen in that forest. One day we’d be mothers, the next explorers. On the weekends, we’d hear my dad up and behind our house planting trees.