This was a creative writing excercise I did at work. I'll eventually edit this one, because these are treasured memories, but that day is not today.
Prompt: In our family, there was no clear line between _______ and _______.
In our family, there was no clear line between nature and us. Our trailer periodically had portions of walls missing and holes in the floor where possums and raccoons would make their way inside. Every time dad came across a little money or some scrap wood, we'd get a new wall or a new section of flooring.
We had the one gas heater in the middle of the trailer, and we'd all sleep with our doors open under piles of blankets to keep from freezing to death.
One winter, the parakeet Dad got us for Christmas died in the middle of the night. That's how we learned that our gas vent was blocked. That dead parakeet saved our lives. Can you imagine what would have happened if Dad hadn't noticed the dead bird when he came home from second shift late that night? We all slept with our doors open and windows shut tight.
I don't remember ever willingly wearing shoes. Most of my childhood memories are of me running barefoot in the woods. I can still conjure up the way the pine barrens felt on my bare feet, and how different the woods with more Oaks felt. I can also recall how different each kind of tree bark felt when I'd lost my grip and slid down a tree trunk. White pine bark flakes, revealing soft, velvety layers below. Oak bark doesn't flake and left scrapes and scratches all up and down my thin limbs.
My feet also vividly remember the slip of the Georgia red clay after a rain. As long as there weren't any sharp rocks I could see, I'd spend hours climbing to the top of the gully and sliding down after a downpour. Afterward, my exposed skin would be hot and tight from being rubbed raw and dried out by the clay. Those were the days I'd have to be hosed down before I was allowed back in the house.
I also remember all of my stick and mud huts.
The best one I ever built was the one that none of the neighborhood boys knew about. It was a lean-to, propped up against the face of a gully wall. I'd dug into the wall and created little benches and shelves in the mud. It was hidden and cozy in my gully-cave. I found lots of ancient spice and medicine bottles digging around in the woods. I remember how the bottle of rue tincture from the 1920s still smelled like rue. I decorated that hut with a box of colorful kitchen sample tiles I found abandoned in the woods.
I spent hours in that hut, rearranging my spice jars and other found trash trinkets. I was the only girl in the neighborhood of feral boys and wild dogs, and having a hidden place of my own was bliss. I didn't have to argue with anyone over design choices or division of labor. I didn't have to fist fight anyone to keep my trash trinkets or muscadines.
We had a flash flood that washed out the driveway and everything else in the gully, and that's how I lost that hut. I went down the hill to survey the damage and cried violently brokenhearted little girl tears when I realized that even the beautiful tiles I'd pressed into the walls had been washed away and carried down the mountain.
Later, at some point after that flood, my little brother nearly lost his life in that gully on account of falling into a meat bee nest. We almost couldn't get him out of there. He had to go to the hospital
I never rebuilt that hut. Instead, I focused my efforts on building a hut under a laid-down sweetgum next to a massive poplar that we all called the Big Tree. The sweetgum still had roots in the ground, so it was just growing sideways. I loved that tree. I loved being able to walk the entire length of it, up to the tallest point I could bear. I could really feel it wobble at the top, and the prospect of falling off was kind of exhilarating, albeit in a safe way -- the ground below was loamy and springy from generations of leaves piling up and rotting away.
I eventually abandoned the tree hut because one of the older boys, Blake, insisted on shoring up the sides with sheets of old rusted tin roof he'd found. I couldn't move inside of it without getting cut by the jagged tin, so I left. He also imposed a "tax" on any of the honeysuckle I harvested in the part of the woods he claimed. I later pushed him off of a barn roof because he showed me his dick. He had to go to the hospital for some broken bone, I can't remember what. If you ask me, I'd say he deserved it. My dad thought he deserved it too, and I didn't get in trouble. I think he mighta been proud of me, actually.