My Side of the Mountain

“The Secret Garden”

“Tom Sawyer”

“A Present for the Princess”

“My Side of the Mountain”

Disney’s “Sleeping Beauty”, “Snow White”, “The Wizard of Oz” and Dad’s soothing, animated voice lulling me to sleep, assuring me that all is well in the world and that he, my tanned knight in a bleached T-shirt, will protect me from the ghosts that hijacked my slumber. 

Escape. Discovery. Freedom. Imagination. The little girl singing in the forest, painting river rocks, wading in the cool creek, hunting for salamanders and maple leaf boats. Taking off in her covered wagon with her clanging iron pans and flour sacks full of provisions. 

That was me then. That is me now. Surrounded by pixie dust. 

Is it everything I imagined, this life as a pioneer woman? Yes, even better. The rain-soaked moss is softer, the greens are greener, the tickling creek is giddier, and my redwood tree forest home is cozier than I ever envisioned. 

To live a dream I tenderly carried since I was 4, playing make-believe in the cottage Dad built when The Barkers lived on Spreckles Lane, is comforting, uplifting, peaceful, joyful, but the description that best suits this connect-the-dots, full circle experience, is meant to be. 

This, I know to be true: The script I am living was written long before I was born. It’s taken all these years, all the mistakes, recalculations, the yes’s and no’s, jumbles and rumbles and grumbles, to land me in this exact spot along the bank of Prairie Creek with my book, cup of lukewarm Trader Joe’s coffee, and laptop, to chronicle and celebrate gratitude.

I am a little girl in a 69-year-old body. 

All my left and right turns, the tears and embraces, dwell inside this strong and fragile clay vessel. The spirit I arrived with, even before my conception, remains the same: I am the sum total of all my experiences, which I can recall and conjure in an instant, inspired by a photo or sensory reminder. 

I am a Girl Scout, thumbing my blue G.S. Guidebook to the pages about camping, unlatching the scratched aluminum mess kit, pretending that dirt, leaves and ocean pebbles are really steaming canned chili.   

I am ginger Lorraine’s next door neighbor, sitting in the Johnson’s VW camper van pretending to put my Chatty Cathy daughter to bed. 

I am racoon tail-capped Davy Crockett traversing through the ferns, doing my best to throw Native American-killing colonists off my trail. 

I am the forest. Reaching toward heaven. Lush with anticipation. Anxious for Fall. 

I am a symphony of green. 

A ranger told me last night before the campfire program after I gushed my euphoria about being surrounded 24/7 by green, that humans are the only species who can distinguish variations of green.

“All other animals,” Ranger Brett said, “just see green.”

Oh, us complicated, longing-to-define, humans.

True enough. When inept me tries to describe this curtain, these drapes, this furniture, this ceiling, this carpet of camouflage, my limited vocabulary turns Crayola crayon—-pine, grass, Spring, Army, lime, moss, sea foam—I realize it’s simply not possible, not in words, not in photos, not in watercolor, to capture, to preserve, this feeling of green, which, by the way, I tried to do when I visited my first-ever forest, Sequoia National Park, when I was in the fourth grade and Mom let me organize and plan a family vacation; I took a plastic tub from Smart and Final and tried to net the Sierra Nevada Mountain air. Two things about that experience: First, empower kids to plan family trips, and two, heed that inner longing, the thing you know you need to do, but keep postponing, and just do it. Because. Green is turning rusty orange. Then it’s gone, mulched back to where it began. 

Here, by this gurgling, playful creek, sans deadlines, schedules and lack, these words, these wispy ribbons of crepe paper, surface: when you want for nothing, you have everything.

Oh yeah, that’s right. I forgot. Again. 

I tumble into a leaf canoe and float toward the sea, docking, when it feels right, into a mermaid cove, where I can play, take a nap, have a picnic, meet up with friends, read a book, paint, write or sing off key. Too much to do in a single day or was it a thousand seconds? On my side of the mountain, one never knows.