Moving

I'm leaving Richmond.

In less than a week.

And I grew up here. On Jahnke Road. I used to climb the trees in the front yard and sit there, all summer, reading. I hid in the shrubbery that circled our driveway, and read among the leaves. I ate jelly beans while lying on the top of my swing set, late at night, after my parents were asleep, and I re-named all the stars and constellations after books that I had read.

On afternoons, I walked to Lake Paige and pretended I was an explorer. Since Lake Paige was a man-made lake, there wasn't a great deal to actually explore, so I created my own obstacles to overcome. Of course, the time I encountered the copperhead was an actual obstacle, which I overcame by screaming, freezing, screaming, and running like hell.

A duck once bit my brother at Lake Paige. That was pretty funny.

And I discovered the Gulch because of Lake Paige. And because I discovered the Gulch I discovered myself. Sitting there, afternoon after afternoon, growing older, smoking cigarettes, falling in love. I walked there from my house, after school--a mile down the street, thru the woods, across the creek, down the train tracks, take a right into the forest before the overpass--it was the journey that mattered, almost as much as the sitting.

There are so many hidden places in this city. The old pumphouse, behind the Nickel Bridge--I haunted that place for a summer. Or two. Or three. Who pays any attention to the old pumphouse, in the shadow of Dogwood Dell and the Carillon? I never saw more than a handful of people there during my haunting. I saw some ghosts, though--they were mostly mine. And I wonder if they're still there, dancing with the fireflies and listening to the cicadas, somewhere on the second floor of the pumphouse.

I hope so.