“One glance at a book and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for 1,000 years. To read is to voyage through time.” - Carl Sagan

This time of year brings back so many memories:

Growing up on a farm in the middle of a town so small that it didn’t even have a stoplight, where the closest street to my house didn’t have a name; where evenings were spent down by the pond watching for bats and lightning bugs, listening to bull frogs bellow on the muddy banks and the gentle lowing o...f the cows nearby; afternoons spent making wreaths woven from the wildflowers in the field; the feeling of the soft, balmy breeze that scattered the dogwood buds at my feet – pink snow; the slippery moss on the felled trees in the forest nearby, where the creek was musical and I just wanted to walk in it forever, skipping from one flat stone to the next, discovering treasures like the first spring flower – a tiny, blue starburst, so shy and small and tucked right by some moss – and finding that rusty, metal mailbox by the tree that my sister and I used for years to send letters to each other; flying down the hill on an old sled that didn’t respond to steering, with Lassie, our collie dog chasing after us, joyfully barking; making snow forts in the pasture, pretending we were on Hoth (the curious cows became AT-AT walkers); going on a mission to find the brightest orange and red leaves in October; collecting maple syrup from the trees and drizzling that goodness into each little square on a homemade waffle; climbing the spindly persimmon tree and seeing how many I could carry back to the house in my shirt; frolicking in the freshly tilled garden and relishing the softest, warmest dirt on earth; drawing on old pieces of wood and transforming the hay loft in the barn into the NCC-1701-D with a long PVC pipe to fire/roll walnuts at intruders; making the Barbie doll swim in the cow trough (I’m sure she loved those close encounters of the cow kind); cuddling lambs and seeing new life and new beginnings every spring; leaning against Thumper, the sweetest steer, while I read old Nancy Drew mysteries and he chewed his cud; kissing Merry’s velvety pink nose and hearing her soft whinny; brushing Lassie for hours, singing to her and listening to her happy doggy talk; rolling down the hill by the barn in old metal grain barrels, crawling out and staring at the sky until the world stopped spinning; playing “raptor tag” with Christine after dinner (when you’re a kid, you actually believe that your sister has transformed into a raptor and is going to eat you); swinging on the swingset after dinner, watching the clouds pile high like lumpy mashed potatoes; feeling the wind change as the deep rumble of thunder in the distance filled my chest and made my heart beat fast – I just wanted to be caught up in that sound and that power; swinging as high as I could, with a sticky, melting popsicle in my hand, and jumping off, wishing I could keep soaring into the sky; that feeling of running barefooted through the pasture, hopping through the grass and praying I wouldn't land in anything...questionable; walking beneath a cathedral of heavy-laden trees in a glistening world of white; making perfect footprints in fresh snow all the way to the barn; feeling the wildness of a winter wind blowing ice crystals across the barren pasture - the sun transformed that movement into scattered diamonds; the comforting clatter of the heater turning on in the middle of the night; the teasing spring breeze that made me itch from the inside-out for something…some adventure…something beyond myself; searching for the first shoots of bright green spring grass  - the end of a long, wearisome winter.