Where We Used To Play...

I know some people never leave their hometown. Some people live in the same house where they've lived all their lives. I've lived in a few places, but the majority of my life I've lived at the end of the same street.

My parents were wise. Almost forty-five years ago they invested in property. They bought several acres of land on a hillside of the Wasatch Mountains. And they sat on it. Growing up on the side of a mountain can be quite an adventure for a kid. With only three channels on TV (four if you count PBS...) and the advent of video games many years in the future, we turned to the great outdoors for fun. We built forts in the summer and sledding runs in the winter. Those were good times.

But, everything eventually changes, and when it came time for my siblings and me to build homes of our own, my mother developed the land and there was where we built, across the street from my parents house. We've been here over eleven years.

Our house sits on an area where we used to play. There was this weird plant--half tree, half scrub--that grew wild. We used to crawl around as little kids in the natural tunnels made by the plants. In fact, I think they're making their way back in some areas. 

One thing I wanted to save was a big scrub oak in what would become our back yard. On our hill there's huge patches of scrub oak, and from what I understand, it's a little difficult trying to transplant them, so if we lost this one, I would have been sad.

Fortunately, it not only survived the construction, but seems to have flourished (trees like to be watered several times a week...). Yesterday I went out at sunset and snapped a few pictures. Even with many of its leaves already fallen, it's still a beautiful tree. I'm glad we were able to keep it.