The Nightmare

Always a similar nightmare. I'm a child, somewhere between 7 and 12, and I walk out the back door of the house I grew up in in Ohio. I look toward the field that extends from the back yard. At the end of this field is a woods where I spent countless hours as a child. However, this time when I look past the field to the back woods something has changed. The woods have come undone in a way, parts are still there, a few clumps of trees, but spread throughout the area are houses. A cookie-cutter development with equally cookie-cutter houses now sits where that beautiful woods used to be. I writhe in anger, sadness and disappointment. I am powerless to do anything about it, I was powerless to stop the development of the land and there is nothing that can be done to restore it.

I have been having this dream all my life. Even to the present time I will have a dream like this at least once a year. The dream varies every time. Sometimes the development has completely wiped the trees away and I look on from far off, other times I walk up to the tree line and everything looks normal until I enter the woods and upon doing so I am met with houses and yards instead of the thick of the woods. In some variations I see the construction and clearing take place, in others it's already complete. But it's all the same theme.

To this day I fear that area's development. My family would never buy the land, even if it were offered to us and I do not see myself settling in that area anyways. I sometimes fantasize that the owners will some day donate the land as a preserve, rendering it untouchable and sealed, forever safe. I suppose until that happens I'll continue to have this same dream. If and when the day does finally come when the nightmare becomes reality I think I'll be found with disappointed tears. I will be heartbroken.

People that grew up moving a lot maintain that they have no roots and no nostalgia connected to place or land. Others simply are not fond of where they grew up even if it is all they know. Sometimes I wish I didn't feel such a connection to the place and the land where I grew up. Damn it that where I grew up is so prone to change. There are parts of me that are now looking, silently, for another piece of land. Some space to breath and move, a hint of where I grew up, quiet, dark at night and away from the hustle and bustle.