Paradise Lost - A Childhood Memory of Lost Innocence
72When I was a child, I played in the woods. I never worried about ticks, or snakes, or bad guys. There were oak trees, and beeches, and maples. Robins skittered along the path and quail led a parade of little ones like Miss Clavel and her girls across the path in front of me.
"Bob White! Bob White!" and if you whisled just right, they seemed to answer back, clear, cheerful, and bright.
Mockingbird on patrol. Owls in the night. The impressive bound of brown thrasher. The tiny sweet call of warblers.
When I was a child, I played in the woods. There was a huge old fallen tree, the bark long gone and the wood hard and smooth as stone. It formed an L and that was our house, furnished with rocks and milk crate tables and chairs. A curtain of willow hung between our house and the stream.
It was quiet in the woods. It was a place of peace and safety. It was my world. Adults never came into the woods. And the stream was clear and clean.
A Woods
Well, most adults never went into the woods. My father did. He took us out for long walks in the dark when it snowed. The soft white woods so safe at night and nothing else moved but the great looming presence of my father who'd stand still for long periods of time, just watching along the snowy paths at how the trees were shadowed with white and listening to the crystalline silence.
The world was a kind and gentle place, then, punctuated by bouts of loud laughter.
The first thing I saw in the morning was the woods. It grew right up next to our house with a little dirt road in between. And along that dirt road grew golden rod, blue chicory, and great plumes of September aster covered with tiny daisies in early fall. The trees whispered outside my window and the smell of the woods blew into my room with earthy goodness, the sweet breath of trees.
Beech Tree
One spring morning, we all went to school in my mother's monster Chrysler. We called it the Flower Wagon. Kids piled in, sat on laps. Some kids stood. It was the Spring Festival with games and music and wild running around. My mother spent the day at a booth, laughing with the other mothers while they shoved peppermint sticks into halved lemons, a favorite treat.
It was a great day. May. Warm sun. Blue sky. But the thrill of running wild at school dimminished quickly. We all agreed. The day would be better spent in the woods. I waited impatiently while my mother fisnished her stint at the lemon stick stand.
Once again, we piled into the big black car. We planned our afternoon in the woods. Should we work on our dam in the stream? Maybe we would follow the stream, down past the bridge, past the deep spot where willows hung in deep green water, past the place where the pine trees grew. Way down to where the woods opened up for a golf coarse and we'd run up and down the shorn green hills until the golfers chased us, clubs raised high over their head and the metal shafts caught the sunlight. They chased us and we ran laughing in bratty glee to the safe woods where the trees gathered to protect us.
We drove along Park Drive, past 1920's bungalows, azaleas all in bloom, past my favorite house, the brown shingled one with a wysteria friinge along the wide porch.
We turned the corner onto my street. Slapped in the face with sky - there was a big blank hole where the woods used to be! My mother slammed her foot on the brake. We all lurched forward. It was gone - all gone - the trees gone in a few short hours, disappeared.
My mother, crying, pulled up to the house. She ran inside to call my father, as if he could do something.
And what was left of the woods, knocked down, tree roots obscenely exposed, some as tall as the trees used to be. birds darted wildly. A robin crashed into a horizontal tree trunk. A sparrow shot past my head so close I could feel its movement. Rabbits and squirrels ran into the street, all of them crazed in the face of apocalypse.
Later that day, we drifted down into the wreckage, climbed the hideous sideways trees, the leaves still so green, it seemed like it would stay that way, a skewed nightmare forest where up and down were lost concepts.
The following weeks filled with the sound of large machinery that ate up the trees and contoured the land. they were monsters, crawling across a dusty, barren landscape. My mother kept the windows closed to the orange dirt and the torn up earth stank of corruption and death.
Boys snuck down to the disappeared woods at night to pour sand into the fuel tanks of bulldozers. I spend my evenings pulling up surveyors' stakes and throwing them as if that would make a difference, as if that would bring back the trees.
Mr. Hall had failed to get zoning for his project. He wanted to built an apartment complex where heaven once stood. My father handed out papers to encourage neighbors to attend meetings of the zoning commission. I spent my summer walking the neighborhood, slipping the invitations into people's doors. Always, another meeting, a new sheaf of papers. As if that would bring back the trees.
The wrecked land soon sprouted with wildflowers, weeds, and lanky young trees. Eventually, the place became a park. Grass grew where the trees once stood. somehow, they reconfigured the stream. They moved it! It seemed like a sacrilege!
Pine Trees - Young Pine Trees
Forty years later, I walked along the stream with my son. Liquor bottles lay smashed among the rocks. Blue plastic bags festooned the remaining trees, ugly, scraggly things. The metal walls of an indoor tennis court rose where we used to play house.
I remembered walking in the woods at night with my father in the snow. The way the woods tinged orange in the fall. The sound of mockingbirds outside my window at midnight in summer. The whisper of the wind in the leaves.
When I was a child, I played in the woods. Once, the beautiful world waited outside my bedroom window. Then it didn't. Innocence lost.
They Paved Paradise and Put Up a Parking Lot
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This hub is so sad and beautifully written.It is such a shame that beautiful woods are always being sacrificed. I feel for you. Nice job.
Mike, thanks for sharing your special spot. I am sorry that you will lose the solitude and I appreciate your long comment. Sometimes we think about stuff that makes us sad, and it can feel very lonely. But plenty of people have lost their places in the name of progress. I tried to write this several times and stopped because I'd start to cry.
ladyjane, thank you for the sweet comment. Sometimes, on here, it's nice to just write, to dig down and not think about trying to sell stuff.
A very beautiful but sad essay. I guess we all have memories like that even in the wild Rockies.
What a sad, yet beautifully written story. I love the video as well, it's so nice to play while you are reading.
I also used to play in the woods it was a safe sanctuary for me. I knew the woods like the back of my hand.
I used to swing on the vines, catch polliwogs in the pond. Knew all the different kinds of mosses and wood flowers. Lady slippers, trillium's (or stink pots), soldier moss and princess pine were a few of my favorites.
I went back to the woods in my adult life to take a stroll and just like in your story, the woods as I knew it were gone. It was full of houses.
Thanks so much for taking me back down memory lane.
Sage
juneau, I think of the Rockies as being a precious, wild place, mostly untouched, full of the things that God put there, but I guess that many place get wrecked. I live in a house. Used to be a woods. When they built this house, I guess somebody's heart broke.
Thank you, Sage. Unlike you, I just was there. I didn't think about it. Didn't know the names of much. Just stupidly happy.
This was a bittersweet story: Sweet for the beautiful memories it conjured up and bitter for the advent of Change. I laughed when you wrote about how your brothers poured sand in the gas tanks of the bulldozers as if they were agents of Mother Nature herself. This might be my favorite line of all:
He wanted to built an apartment complex where heaven once stood.
Thank you so much, Dolores for sharing this with all of us. Although I grew up in the suburbs of NYC, I long for acres and acres of woods and a lake in which to swim and fish. One day, it will be a reality.
Dohn
What a beautifully written tale! I remember those pieces of heaven as a child too. Hunting robin egg shells, collecting pine cones, wading in the creek. I especially love how you wrote about the chaos that ensued in the aftermath of the crime.
Sincerely, Tammy
Beauitifully written. The world is changeing again, my parents use to tell me that, I didn't understand it at that time, I sure do now.
That was so well written and SO sad - progress sometimes makes me just heartsick. It seems we are losing more and more beauty and instead filling it up with more 'change'. I don't think it is change - I think it is useless clutter. Here in Central Oregon, we have houses going up and buildings still being built and so many empty buildings. It just makes no sense to me - and all the wildlife that it destroys. We live on a wetlands and they want to zone that for housing - it makes no sense whatsoever and here even a wetlands is not sacred. Luckily for us at the MOMENT with the economy, the project was scrapped. Anyway - beautifully written and love the pics.
A simple but moving tale. Hang onto those happy memories though
I loved this hub! So well written! I guard our land and trees just as I guard our children, grandchildren and animals. There certainly has been some real losses over the years...forests, gardens, old buildings and most importantly, the sense of being safe. Thanks for reminding all of us.
Dohn, thank you so much. Funny, I met the grandson of the developer on the beach one day. I was a teenager and it took all my common sense not to attack the poor kid.
Tammy, I appreciate your comment. I remember feeling bad about going down there amidst all that wreckage, but figured that it was like a swan song and just had to do it.
Roses, there is always change but when you are a 10 year old and you think life is just perfect, you don't realize how it can change so fast and that you have no control over your surroundings. Thank you.
akirchner - I can't understand how they can build on wetlands especially after all the environmental protection and wetland laws. I visit a beach and even 5 years ago, they totally destroyed a wet land island to build these million dollar row houses that overlooked the city yard. Of course, no one is buying them. It's a disgrace. I appreciate your interest.
ethel, thank you for commenting. I really enjoy hearing from fellow hubbers. It is encouraging.
Thanks, granny. Like akirchner said, they put up building in beautiful, natural areas while huge old shopping centers and defunct industrial areas sit empty and create eyesores for the whole community.
A heart felt hub to be sure. It's sad to see things from our childhood disappear. The place I was born and spent my early child hood is gone, completely gone, just a huge hole in the ground, left by strip mining for copper, so now when asked where I come from I say no where.
50, of course it is inevitable that things change and 'progress' is made, but sad to lose our own little part of the natural world. To have your old home lost to a strip mine just seems so sad. Thanks for stoppin' in, old timer!
I really enjoyed reading this! Thanks for sharing ... you have such a way with words.
This is very well done. You paint pictures of happy healthy children watching as the world around them changes. I remember the river, and the woods. Thankfully for me my special spot is still there, but for how long?
Loved it
And all in the name of development, or private profit. Very sad, but beautifully told, as always.
thankyou, beautifully written.
What a beautiful, nostalgic hub! Very well written Dolores.
I really loved your writing on display here, Dolores. The story is poignant and perfectly told. Thank you for the fine read.
Wonderfully written. I treasure the memories of being a child in the woods. I lived in the country in an old farm house...had lots of woods to explore. My dad use to say,"If you want to see heaven...take a walk." :)
What a brilliant hub, very well written and heartfelt thanks for sharing :-)
Rose - thanks ever so! I appreciate your comment.
Duchess - guess we all have our childhood favorite places. I should consider myself lucky instead of complaining about it for over 40 years. Thanks!
Paraglider, thank you for reading, I'm honored.
Thank you, salt!
Nemingha, I am glad that you left such a kind comment.
Good to see you, James. Thanks for stopping by!
Tom, ain't a woods just the best playground? Thank you.
sophs, glad you liked it and it was heartfelt, I blubbered some while writing it.
Wonderful hub. It reminded my of my own youth, when I was like a king in the forest. Now there is cement everywhere and only a fraction of woods still remain where they were. It's a pity that human beings are so good at ruining almost everything. Yet some robins and blackbirds still remain, but they are just a shadow of what used to be. Thanks for this beautiful hub.
The echo the words said by almost everybody before me. It's a sad tale but so beautifully written. I think this kind of story is repeated almost everywhere in the world. Because of unregulated development and sometimes (or is it oftentimes?) greed, our forest cover is now almost gone. It's really so sad.
Thank you for writing about this, Dolores.
The woods are a great place to spend the day, so peaceful! I think it's a primitive instinct we still have inside of us.
Very nicely written. Looking forward to reading more of your writings. Thanks.
Dude, I think that every neighborhood should have a woods and tree lined streets. The air would be sweeter and cleaner and life would be better all around. It wouldn't take much. I think of all those huge, empty parking lots where trees once stood and it just seems stupid. Thank you for your kind words.
Jill, I appreciate the kindness of your comment. It's so nice to get a little sympathy for my loss. After bitching for so many year to my family, they probably get a bit sick of it.
Tony, maybe all that oxygen exhaled by the trees just makes us feel really good. Thank you!
Sheila B. I appreciate your comment. Glad you enjoyed it!
As far as I know the woods where I grew up are still there although the fields are now filled with houses. There is nothing quite like walking in the solitude and beauty of a wooded setting. You spoke of it so beautifully in this hub. Thanks for the reminder.
You are definitely right. Human beings are made to appreciate nature, flowers, birds....., not cement. :) I'm sure that's one of the reasons for the decrease of health and also for the increase of crime. It's easier to have a low/bad mood when everything around is grey. This hub is so beautiful that I had to stumble it. :)
Thank you, Peggy. I'm glad that you still have your woods. too bad about the fields but I guess they have to put the houses somewhere.
Dude, oh boy, thank you. I don't know much about StumbleUpon but have heard plenty and really appreciate your kindness.
Loved, loved, loved this, Dolores. I was expecting something of a different denouement having to do with woods these days being "unsafe" rather than sacrified to "progress."
You bring back fond memories of being a child, having the freedom to play wherever. Even the kids' neighborhood advocacy against the big machines.
Reminds me of the song "They Paved Paradise and Put Up a Parking Lot" -- Joni Mitchell
MightyMom - I know. I hate how the woods are supposed to be evil where bad stuff happens, dead bodies and all. The woods are necessary places. Every neighborhood should have one. Funny you mention Joni Mitchell's song. I was going to use a video of that very song, but didn't because she laughs that crazy laugh at the end and I thought it would detract from the depressingness of my theme. Thanks!
Very beautifully written! I grew up in the hills of West Virginia, so I understand playing out in the woods! Everywhere around us was the woods, and beautiful trees! The main worry about my home was forest fires taking down the trees so fast that it would scare us all, because we knew if the fires reached our homes, we would loose them. We lived 7 miles from the nearest town and fire station. Although there were fire rangers out watching over the land during fire season. My dad was a full time coal miner and a part time fire ranger! He helped put out alot of forest fires.
Enjoyed reading your Hub!!
Good article. It seems that beautiful greenspace is under assault everywhere. Sad.
This has been happening around me all my life. Now as a parent I am witnessing the destruction of the last surviving wetlands and forest in the area that I live. I take my kids to rallies and try to do what I can, as your parents did. It is heart wrenching to see the destruction and see the dead cockatoos that can't survive as they have no trees or water anymore.
Leela, the threat of fire must have been very frightening. but you must have loved your time living so near the beautiful trees. Thank you for stopping in!
doitrightnow, I know, it seems like every time I see a lovely spot, it disappears under a parking lot. Thanks for the comment!
kj8, I know that business demands the destruction of forests, but there should be some kind of balance. As Joyce Kilmer said, 'poems are made by fools like me, but only God can make a tree.' Thanks for your input. It is appreciated.
Beautiful and heart wrenching. A memory all too common to those "of a certain age"
Thank you, Mike. The memory of all those trees cut down still brings tears to my eyes.
That is so sad I still cannot stand when man gives way to growth, they certainly did not need a large apartment complex where beauty used to stand. I am glad that all of you spent the summer trying to protect your forest although it became a park but at least a large eyesore would not be in your own backyard. :)
I can relate to that in Bend Or. where there, they plowed down the pine trees to make way for a housing complex. About 20 acres of trees gone!
Beautifully shared Dolores, all in the name of selfishness and profits, Thank you, Maita
"They took all the trees, and put em in a tree museum
And they charged the people a dollar and a half to see them"
Aren't Joni Mitchell's words so right? I know what it feels like to have treasured scenes from one's childhood just ripped away like that. It feels like a part of oneself has been murdered.
Your words too are beautiful and poignant and I appreciate so much that you have written this piece.
Trees are treasures and so important for us, for our physical and mental and spiritual health.
Thanks again
Love and peace
Tony
AE - thank you for visiting my hub. Actually, the park is often a big mess strewn with trash. Going back to check it out just made me sad.
Susan, sometimes I feel like a jerk complaining about it, after all, I live in a house. But I would only buy a home second hand, never new. I love pine woods as you mentioned. What a loss. Thanks for the comment.
Prettydarkhorse, and the man never really made any money except what the county paid him for the park. He built the original development of single homes and the apartment houses would have lowered property values. The other ones that he build wound up attracting trouble. Though they are actually kind of cute, it became a rough neighborhood full of drugs and hoods.
Oh Tony, thank you. I so appreciate the kindness of your words.It was a spiritual loss, indeed it was. I guess I should put that song up after all.
I miss the carefree days of playing in the woods and staying out all day as a child. I hate that it seems there can't be a patch of trees along a highway without someone wanting to put up commercial businesses when there are plenty of empty office spaces and other buildings that are vacant that we could use.
Lovelypaper - oh those long days of running wild. Too many kids today do not have that opportunity. They don't have the open spaces, there is to much traffic, and their lives are too busy. Nature is the best playground. Thank you for stopping by my hub!
Wow, nicely written Hub. I too remember being able to go off on a summer day and play all day out in the woods... and for me as well, Today the woods are a parking lot for a strip mall, and my kids would disappear if they did what I did as a kid... sad huh...
Usually when there are this many comments I don't leave my two cents, but I really wanted to let you know your writing touched me, and brought back some very old memories...
Thank You, Mikel
Mikel, thank you for leaving a comment. I appreciate it. Seems like a lot of folks have lost their natural playgrounds. I've lost several. One beautiful pine woods on the shore was cut down for a shopping center. The sad thing is that the parking area where the woods used to be is always empty and full of trash. What a waste.
It is horrible how quickly things disappear-and how quickly humans destroy the beauty in this world. This is a great Hub-thanks so much for sharing
hc porter
Thank you, HC. I am glad that you enjoyed the hub.
Very nice hub! You are a great writer! I will enjoy reading more of your hubs.
Thank you, Michael! I appreciate the compliment greatly.
Beautifully written and sad, all in the name of progress, eh?
You have produced a marvelous essay and I read your tears in every line. Painting such a vivid word picture after so many years speaks volumes about the significance of your memories. Well done, Doloris.
Q.
Cindy - I realize that houses need to be built, progress made, but it seems like we've gone too far. We have large areas of abandoned shopping centers and empty office space, empty parking lots and abandoned houses in the city, while the green spaces are destroyed to build new stuff to abandon. Thanks for your interest in my hub!
Quill, I am glad that I was able to move you. The famous guitarist, Dick Dale, said that the aim of all art is - that I want to make you feel how I feel. Thank you for letting me know I was able to do just that.
As if the rapine of the woods isn't enough nowadays, it is worst when none is left where it used to be. Sad story of your childhood memories.
Thank you, Lita. The shock was overwhelming, the loss so sudden.
This was absolutely beautiful and terribly sad at the same time. Thank you for sharing your story. : )
Becca, I really appreciate your comment because that was what I was trying to do.
What a wonderfully evocative account. Innocence lost indeed. It is a scar not only on the land, but in our very souls as well when this kind of thing happens. Beautifully written and a moving account of childhood joys.
Dragonbear, thank you for your understanding comment. Writing this was really good for me. The sudden shock was a life rearranging event.
What a hauntingly beautiful story! My woods are still standing, but no kids play there anymore - theyt've all grown up and moved away.
Habee, glad to hear that your woods are still there. Maybe no kids play in it but the trees still grow and the birds still sing. I guess kids are too busy watching TV and playing video games. Thanks for stopping by!
How sad it is when nature disappears under our eyes, so more "civiliation" can replace it.
It reminds me of Celentano's song about Milano getting ever so big while his world was getting smaller by the day
Petra, the tough thing for me was that I believed the world was as I saw it at the time, that just because I loved it, and it was big and it was nature and somehow so much more real than my own little life. The shock was devastating. Thank you for leaving a comment. I must check out the song.
Oh I loved this - people say cats and such destroy wildlife yes they do but not as much as people - our wildlife in australia are losing more and more of their land to progress - you know as I was reading i felt the pain of the little creatures as they had their santuary torn from them and I imagined your little cubby house being tossed and turned into a unknown grave- I saw many things happening andfelt the saddness - yes I really loved this and I thank you for sharing it
aren't we a greedy species.
Bonny, thank you so much. The area I grew up in has changed a lot in 40 years. There used to be so much more green. Now, we are full up with parking lots, apartment houses, and shopping centers. It just isn't pretty anymore.
purplerose, greedy, but sloppy too. I think we can have progress and business without destroying beauty. Some of these shopping centers have huge parking lots that are never filled. Thanks.
This is such a lovely memory.. and I really think I could feel what you had felt- a sign of excellent writing!!
Thank you, Carolina, I appreciate your comment. Although the memory of growing up beside a woods was lovely, it was short lived.
Lovely memories although I thought it said Paradise LUST and I was all prepared for one of your steamy fiction pieces. However, by your account, the developers are lusting for the chunks of paradise they can turn them into view lots and buyers are lusting for the opportunity to buy them so technically it works. =:) Go ahead with the other one though, I bet you would be great at it.
Winsome, so here you were looking for dirt and all you got was a tear jerker about a kid in the woods. haha. Why can't the developers lust after abandoned parking lots or decrepit strip malls? Thanks for the comment.
Hi Dolores, What a wonderful childhood you had! You write so beautifully. I found myself wanting to cry about the black hole and the trees and animals. And then I kept having to swallow the lump in my throat! And I love your photography too. I lived in Mendocino for a short while; so I can appreciate the importance of fighting for the environment. By the way, I would love it if you stopped by to read my short story called "Spencer". I would soak up your every observation!
tracy - thank you very much. The story is really one of those pivotal moments in childhood when you suddenly understand what is going on in the world. I should have done something with that, something positive. Ripping up surveyers stakes wasn't enough.
Another excellent article, Dolores. I thoroughly enjoy your own writing as well.
I've lived that scenario. My home town has become a stranger to me. All the landmarks and forests are being taken away. I cherish the memories though. I really do.
Lila - thank you! I saw that you commented on my Emily Bronte hub, should have checked that comment out first. Anyway, I appreciate your appreciation!
RG - I guess we all have. The area I live in used to be suburban homes mixed in with farms and woodlands. The roads were narrow and pretty. I think that when they built a beltway around the city, it just brought more traffic, business, and people. Thanks for reading and commenting!
How sad. How thoughtless.
Some people simply do not see real beauty.
Trish - and the sad thing is that the area, the stream became a bit of a mess with a crappy little strip mall with a seedy bar, and an ugly indoor tennis court that went out of business. All that for nothing. Thank you for reading and commenting.
Wow, that would be a shock. I grew up in a desert, and had to drive to the beach. Maybe you would have faired better there. :)
bgamall - several times my husband and I visited the Anza Borrego desert of southern California and I thought that I died and went to heaven. But they can make a mess of desserts too. From one vantage point, I spotted the sprawl of a huge golf course and it just seemed so out of place and wrong. Thanks for stopping in!
What beautiful memories you expressed - and still treasure - and how sadly true that this type thing happens too often - damaging 'nature' beyond what might be'necessary'. The first video was beautiful - pictures and music, like a requiem for your Paradise. The second video was like an 'in your face, I can remember' sort of thing - even while maybe standing in that parking lot! Fantastic hub, and thank you!
frogyfish - thank you very much. So many of those parking lots are just rubbish strewn wastelands, what a waste of nature.
Awesome hub, Dolores! Thanks for sharing his with us. You did a great job taking me back to a place in time and conveying your emotions to us. Your photos and links are fantastic, too.
What a beautifully written, heartfelt and powerful article. Your love of the forest was poetically expressed in the prose paragraphs and it was palpable to the reader, as was the cold, cruel shock of the trees you loved so dearly disappearing in a few hours.
This hub was so well written but it haunts the reader because it speaks such truth- in the name of development and progress we strip the earth and generations who follow don't even know the heavenly treasure they are missing unless, as you did, we take our children back to see it and tell them of what used to be there.
Voted up and useful.
Happy - thank you! I cried while I was writing this - bringing the memory back. We used to have so much fun playing in the woods. It was like my home, right outside my window. The woods was like a sanctuary, a haven where the kids ran wild, no trouble, no traffic. Of course my mother was always having to patch up kids who hurt themselves and came limping toward the house with bloody knees.
I guess we all have places in our memories we relate to...things we yearn for. They shape our personalities as we stumble over the many things we face in life and somehow...affect our choices.
Thank you for the great hub!
Rashad Al - yes, these things do shape us. For the best of us, we can attempt to claim the life that we yearn for; but for some, the loss can lead to a feeling of hopelessness and apathy. Peace to you, Rashad!
Mike Lickteig Level 3 Commenter 2 years ago
Three blocks from my home rests a small pond where children can fish. There is no access by car, the only way to reach this pond is a half-mile hike along a path winding through a small forest of trees. Along the route, signs inform us of what types of wildlife one might expect to find in the area. It is peaceful and serene. It is where I go to think and assess my life. It's where I go to find beauty.
Despite the protest of the neighborhood association, plans to build houses right next to the pond are in progress. I still sit near the pond when I need to think, but sometimes dust from the bare earth now blows into my eyes.
We couldn't stop them. The pond will still be there, but eventually the view will include back yards filled with sheds, play equipment, and barbeque grills. There's nothing wrong with any of those things--I just don't want to see them when I visit this pond.
Well, thanks for your very well-written hub. You have a knack for describing the beauty we live in. I responded to it fairly emotionally--hence all these words. Sorry about that.
Thanks again.