Memories

Memories of nature

Age 5: Lindsey, California - Living in a house in the middle of an orange orchard with winter smudge pots.

Age 8: San Jose, California - Climbing my grandmother’s walnut tree and (Santa Cruz mountains) summer with a grandparents in the redwoods, a swing hung between two giant redwood trees, mornings in an open kitchen draped with a tarp whenever it rained. 
Age 15: San Jose, California - Walking to school under old gnarled live oaks that caused large cracks in the sidewalks. Picking up fallen figs in our backyard, fallen almonds at grandparents, eating grapes and avocado’s from grandparents’ yard.

Age 20: Los Angeles, California - Trying to learn to meditate in college at UCLA under some pine trees while people commented as they walked past me.

Age 27: Different trees, landscapes, ice, as we drive across country for the first time heading for Florida.

 Age 30: Formia, Italy - Orchard of olive trees surrounding the apartment buildings with Vesuvius and Ishcia in the distance.

 Age 35: Chesapeake, Virginia - Learning Ikebana with flowers from the yard and fallen branches. The Great Dismal Swamp, mosquitoes and snakes in the yard. Azaleas and  FIREFLIES!!!!

Age 48: Columbia, Maryland - Making a diary of the seasonal changes – light green leaves appear turning darker then into yellow, orange and red before falling to the ground. How the color raises from bottom to top and then down.

Age 56: Columbia, Maryland - The leaves falling just before our move and glad I did not have to rake again.

Age 63: Coos bay, Oregon - Walking the long driveway in different seasons. Watching as the trees sway in the wind and wondering which of the fragile alders’ widow makers will fall in the next big storm.

Age 70: Remembering the smell of the redwoods and watching the ones we planted grow taller each year. Noticing how quickly the seasons change and the years go by…