The Magic of Small, Outdoor Spaces

Between the ages of 3 and 19, I lived at the dead end of a city street. The pavement stopped just past my house. Beyond, a dirt road continued for three additional lots. And then there were woods that, to my childhood frame of reference, went on forever. In winter, a skeleton wall of maple branch and oak trunk, empty chokeberry and dogwood. In spring, the wall grew soft green leaves that became so dense by summer, it seemed I could disappear into another world beyond. There, I was unseen by my older brother and sister waiting on the dirt road, unknown by the adults inside their houses, happy to yell at us, once discovered, to get off their property. My older brother brought my sister and me into these woods—really, no more than a few acres of land between my street and the next—when he babysat us. We spent hours playing adventure scenarios in our private garden. 

I am a city-dweller, and I have come to love nature through small spaces like these. Where else? The backyard. The side yard. The patch of grass and child-size boulder in front of my dad’s university office. The bushes outside my mom’s apartment building. At 7 or 8, I climbed between their leaves and squatted, queasy with delight and deception, hidden until my mom passed right by for the fifth or sixth time, calling for me with increasing desperation.