A Childhood Good-bye

I noticed the road, curving and black like the body of a dead snake splayed in the grass, as I drove home. Cutting its way through the mountainside, the unfinished road dipped out of view under the branches of a few remaining oaks. The roadside barrier stitched together upturned dirt and fresh asphalt. I felt guilty for not noticing the road earlier, for missing the signs of its construction. Like a preoccupied mother discovering a scar on her child without ever knowing about the initial wound, I had neglected to see this change day after day; even though I have known of its coming for years.

The ring of mountains behind our housing track never belonged to us. The huge yellow signs posted on the dead-end barrier and anchored in the riverbed sand told us this much. Yet, these signs were easily left behind as we ventured along the winding paths to mossy wells, to Native American's acorn-grinding holes, to rusted wheel-less trucks, to mud-brick walls, to abandoned tree houses, and to color-splattered paintball battlefields. Beneath the twisted oaks, charred black by wildfires, my brother and I set out on adventures, both real and imagined. We found suitcases broken open and hemorrhaging t-shirts, faded jeans, and little boy's superman undies. From the lost garments, we tried to piece together the possible experiences of an illegal family on the run. Not daring to touch the white bits of clothing, we saved the feeling of them in our minds. We also horded collections of dusty bottle caps, unbroken paint balls, and tiny acorn hats. Each contained an inexpressible fragment of childhood wonder.

We imagined that we were the true owners of the land. We stole scraps of fabric from my mother's craft cupboard and painted it with smashed berries. Whoever was out of our good graces had to play the white villain to our rag-tag, make-believe tribe of neighborhood kids. When we were still in elementary school, my brother, my next-door neighbor, and I had the glorious plan to runaway to these mountains and live off the land. The plan was sabotaged by her babysitter during its first phase. Still, the riverbed and hillside paths never lost the allure for us. Each clearing housed layers of memories.

After it rained and the dry sand disappeared under a rush of water, we spent sunny afternoons wading in the reborn river. My best friend and I lingered behind my mother, who was engulfed in a flurry of fist-pumping delight created by my little brothers. Ankle deep in sparkling water, we whispered about boys and our plans to be friends forever. We promised each other that we would live in a cabin. As a famous movie star, I would have to show up in dark glasses and a head scarf, a lá Audrey Hepburn. She would spend her days saving babies in Africa. Our dreams stretched on with the stream and soaked into the earth.

On summer nights, my aunt told us ghost stories as we scrambled through the shadowy brush. The riverbed was eerily illuminated by back porch lights lining the path. She ran ahead, leaving us screeching wildly in the dark. She leapt out from behind a tree trunk and grabbed us as we pelted down the path. Screaming turned to laughter as we found comfort in our attacker's embrace.

All this never belonged to us, but we claimed it anyway. We explored all its trails, scaled its rocks, and took family Christmas pictures perched on its hillsides, as if they were our living room couches. The riverbed and mountains were an extension of our neighborhood, our backyard, our imaginations. Shaggy hair teens in clouds of cologne made pilgrimages there to push the limits of their adolescent freedom. Mothers with strollers came seeking solace. Families came with lawn chairs, picnic baskets, and binoculars. Yet, all our hours spent there and all our invisible watermarks of memory couldn't save it from its rightful owners.

The casino came and grew, spreading its neon golf courses and electric purple glow into our borrowed wilderness. The traffic doubled and tractors came to dig out trenches for asphalt rivers. The Native Americans, who we emulated in our childhood games, were covered over in bronze. One, a woman clutching her child, stands frozen forever by a lifeless pool in a smoking-filled, teeming lobby. Her metal eyes search for a shore beyond the oceans of parking spaces. People come and go, too blinded by booze and greed to see her.

Now, the road comes slicing through to make good on the promise of those once-benign yellow signs. There will be no more family talks accompanied by the satisfying crunch of dirt, no more paintball battles raging in the brush, and no more explorations along sage-scented trails. Years ago, we staged our one small attempt at rebellion. Under the cover of rain, we marched into the hills and pulled out the construction workers' markers, ripped away their pink plastic flags, and toppled their white pipes. We danced, crazy and howling, with rain weighing down our jeans and streaking down our cheeks. Deflated and dripping, we went home.

Even as the roads rise up to close in on us from every side, we know we can do nothing. We can't bear to be hypocrites; to say to the true owners that nature is a thing of beauty, not comparable to wealth or progress. We can't say it because we are the bringers of selfishness, of a heaven in the sky far away from this earth, of walls and communities that work themselves deep into the ground. We chose to build this world of asphalt, neon, smoke, blaring music, and the constant clinking coins on our portion of earth, which is why we had to borrow theirs in the first place.

We watch in silence as our neighbors race to fulfill the hypnotic call of our advertised, air-brushed dream. Hanging our heads, we wish we could scream, “don't follow us, this is not the way.” But we are too proud and too afraid of who we will be without our big screens, SUVs, convenience foods, and mega churches. We whisper our good-byes to dust, to twisted oaks, to the drying and swelling of riverbeds, to childhoods spent seeking adventures among the trees, to the scent of sage, and to the quick flash of a rabbit darting under the shadow of a hawk. Soon, we will all be standing under the florescence glow of super mart aisles looking for something we will never find in any of our nation's identical strip malls. We console ourselves with the fact that new families need large homes, that people need mega marts, movie multiplexes, and the convince of twenty fast food drive-ins...more than swaying wildflowers...more than mossy rocks... more than a secret place to come of age...more than earth...more than sky...