Eight

And so the Field that once stood behind my childhood home was now nothing more than a shadow of its former beauty. Where once the neighborhood children had run freely from end to end, unhindered by building or road, strangers now parked their SUVs and visited doctors who could just as easily have practiced their medicine in an office in the village, technician answered calls from angry customers around the globe, and children were no longer safe to run where the rabbits had once been bountiful.

When I was young I could look out from my backyard and see nothing but a vast expanse of tall grass bordered by blue sky; an inviting playground provided by Nature for all to use. The Field was egalitarian; it accepted all, rejected no one. Perhaps that was its downfall. We saw it with the nearly-innocent eyes of children…all were welcome, and it never showed signs of running out.

The developers looked at the Field and saw money, and when money meets idealism there is never any doubt which will win. The Field was plowed under, roads were sown, foundations poured. My childhood became a vast parking lot for outsiders; interlopers who showed no respect for the sanctity of what had been a part of my very being. While now children sit before their Xboxes and plug themselves into a secretive world of iPods, we would fly kites, launch model rockets, play hide-and-seek, build forts, and meld with wonder around us.

We had no concept of communing with Nature; we simply did it. We could hear the song of the wind whistling past us as we rode our bikes helter-skelter down the path that transected the Field; we felt the vibration of the Earth in our very core. All was well while we were in the Field. It was our protector, and greedy men had taken it from us.

Every now and again I look into my eyes, reflected back by the mirror, and I am looking into the eyes of that 10-year-old boy who lived in that Field day in and day out, and I find myself silently apologizing to him for what the adults have done. Adults are so often an empty animal; the Child has drained from their soul, and they chase a dragon they can never catch, and wonder why they are unhappy.