I stand tall with a strong spine with its natural curve below my neck and again in my lower back. My body represents what I have always needed to do to be sane. I’ve always needed to move. Swimming, dancing, golfing, tennis, sailing, running, handstands, and hiking. I just had to move.
When I was a kid, I didn’t know there was a label for what I found so much pleasure in. I just left my house and wandered the hills with my brother and cousins. Up and down and up and down. Down into the nearby creeks, up into the hills to visit friends with a donkey. Down from their place on sheets of cardboard we salvaged whenever someone’s family got a new stove or refrigerator. Treasures, those boxes were gold.
I outgrew adventuring with the boys and walked the fields to visit a new friend. To reach her house, I passed through the forbidden land of the estate at the end of my ordinary neighborhood with its lush gardens and dark windows. An empty garden and an empty house. On the far side, the golden hills resumed their roll until I’d arrive at my friend’s house. But she and I didn’t stay inside. Outdoors again, roaming the hills. She knew where there was a cave. We climbed up and settled into talk about who knows what. All I cared about was being outdoors and feeling limitless. Hills and caves and trails. Fear of rattlesnakes and the strange man who kept the gardens in another old California estate that butted up to our newer neighborhood.
When I was a teenager, I convinced my family to move to a wilder place. Our new neighborhood backed up to a regional park and its hills were my own. My brother rejoined my adventures where we could go as far as our little family dog could walk in her search of cow dung to roll in. (She ended up in the laundry sink with a bath after each outing.)
I remember the creeks and the hills and the thrill of small dangers. Those memories live in me and form the body I inhabit today.
By Paul DeLong
On June 4, 2022
The first paragraph is great; it tells us a lot about you, in an upbeat and energetic way.
“All I cared about was being outdoors and feeling limitless. Hills and caves and trails. Fear of rattlesnakes and the strange man who kept the gardens in another old California estate that butted up to our newer neighborhood.” This is a great juxtaposition of the feeling of freedom, with valid concern about coming back to earth about dangers. The mix of the snake and the strange man is a voluminous blend that covers it all. You leave the reader eager to hear more about how “those memories live” in you and how you embody them today.