Time Travels Two: Little House In The Big Woods

When dusk falls we beg our grandfather to make a bonfire. He charges us with the gathering of kindling, a task that only serves to push me further into prairie girl fantasy, forcing me to scrounge for kindling as if my young life, and not the possibility of s’mores, depends on it. When the kindling fails, as it always does, grandpa throws some lighter fluid over the logs, warns us not to tell our grandmother, and lights a match.

Fire! Cheers! A thrill so great I imagine I know EXACTLY how those cavemen felt after they rubbed sticks together for 12 hours and finally got a spark. HOLY SHIT! This shit is awesome! Grab that dead animal and let’s roast it!

Nobody looks better than they do by the light of a fire, and the orange faces of my cousins and siblings are forever burned into my brain, the dramatic shadow of light making every movement more refined, more meaningful. The smoke from the fire traveling up, up, up and through the hole in the pines, a natural chimney for our outdoor fireplace.

At night, the little bungalow we sleep in is cool and sweet, engrained with the scent of summer, the very essence of what it means to be a child lying in her bed staring out the window at the way the water peeks through the pines, wondering at every rustle whether there is a wolf lurking nearby and unable to quiet her mind to the possibilities of the next day.

Nicknamed Walter’s cabin after the previous owner, our grandparents’ eccentric and reclusive summer neighbor, the cabin was Spartan at best. Single beds on the porch. A double bed in the main room. Water so heavy with Iron it tasted like there was a pipe in every glass. A toilet and sink in an adjoining room where the likelihood of seeing a giant spider is such that I have trained myself to hold it all in until the morning, terrified of the prospect of turning on the bathroom light to find a spider staring me in the face. We have a small wooden table for crafting or coloring on rainy days, and enough trees outside that any girl in a Laura Ingalls Wilder phase could stare out the window and wonder what it would have been like to settle this land so many years ago.

It is here that we are tucked in, where I read Ramona Quimby books until our parents declare lights out and we all turn on our sides and wait quietly for sleep to come, bursting into laughter at how quickly the silence falls.

Loons call in the distance. That hollow cry, two notes in three steps. So sad. So mournful.

Back to the city two days later. Three hours in a car, watching the trees whip by us as we sit in artificially cooled air, racing back to our real lives. Tanned legs and arms so dark that the white down of our limbs glows against the background of our skin. Back to school, back to school.

At night, the only noise is car stereos and emergency vehicles. Uniforms are laid out, backpacks are packed. Cool breezes float through the window, tickles my skin while I lay over the covers, the first taste of Autumn riding on the warm scent of summer.