When I was young

This beautiful video reminds me a lot of my childhood:

We had about an acre of backyard/gardens and then enough woods behind that to wander in to my heart’s content. I came to know every part of that small piece of land, and had names and backstories for many of the spots. Down the road, where the little pond emptied into a stream that went under the road to the other side (perfect for playing Pooh sticks), was Terabithia. The woods across the street from my house were somehow forbidden and ominous. There was a cairn of stones behind the garden, and nearby a deep old well. In one corner just beyond our yard, a wasteland of very old broken bottles worn down by time. On a small hill, a semi-circle of trees made a natural nemeton where I would sit and meditate.

I was an only child without many friends, but I never felt lonely out in those woods, because I was not alone. And while many of my games were of course playing pretend, there was an element in there of something real, something numinous. Which is why I still visit these places in my dreams, and they remain very important to me. In fact, the wight connected to that old well became a companion of mine as an adult and is one of my closest personal spirits, even after I moved across the country.

It occurred to me, when watching the end of the video, that unlike most people who set aside their childhood activities and mindset – including a natural sort of animism – I am in fact living a life quite like the one I made for myself then. Spending a lot of my time out in the woods near my home, learning every inch of a tiny piece of wilderness, naming it, meeting the “neighbors,” engrossed in a world that most people don’t even see. I think my child self would have been quite pleased to see this, to know it didn’t have to vanish upon adulthood. That, in fact, I was privy to the secret workings of the world all along, and could go even deeper into those mysteries as I got older.

Perhaps it’s not at all surprising that I ended up so entangled with the wights who I first met back then.