A Field Of Future Memories...

 This is the view from my office window. It's actually a bedroom, but we use it as an office. It looks directly east, toward mountains that separate Box Elder County from Cache County. I can see Interstate-15, Garland, Deweyville, but what I see the most is an empty field.

A field of future memories.

It's Spring Break here. Kids have played outside when the weather's been good. We live in a new neighborhood...there's lot of kids. It's tough to see in the picture, but there's a little electronic truck parked in the dirt, left by its proud owner because something else caught the youngster's attention and he had to leave the truck to go eat or go to the bathroom. Whatever it was, the truck stayed for a little while. Eventually, it was moved back into the garage with his parents's cars.

I suppose if we lived in a world without video games or movies on demand or the internet, the field might get used more. Still, the kids seem to have fun running in the field, playing in the dirt...basically, being kids. It reminded me of the mountain that served as our backyard. We lived on that hill, both summer and winter...spring and fall. We had adventures, built forts, rode our bikes up and down and all around. Our world was endless and our lives were better because of it.

I think of the kids playing in the field today. Twenty years comes pretty fast. Those kids will grow, graduate from school...many will leave on church missions, some won't. They'll enroll in college, or the military or get a job and begin their careers. 

The master plan of the subdivision is to extend the road east and line it with homes, both on the north and south sides of the street. More parents, more kids will call this patch of the gently rising hill home. They will play in their yards and maybe play in a field farther away.

But those kids I see playing now. In twenty years they'll return from school, from missions (both religious and military...) and look at the street. Maybe the owner of the little truck will recall the beautiful spring days when he piloted his vehicle up and down the dirt road and around the field. Will he wonder how things changed so much so fast? My guess is he will...because that's what happens when fields become streets and homes and there's nothing left but the memories.