The land behind my home growing up was an old building site. It had bad drainage and had been abandoned. It was our playground the place that I return to in my dreams. 

Every dark winter the uneven ground would fill up with water, all dank and boggy with brown skeletons of broken reeds and mysterious dark pools.  The sucking mud would threaten the shoes and boots of anyone who ventured too far in. Its borders were walled off with brambles and thorny vines. While seemingly dead, down deep, the land was preparing.

In the spring, it would burst forth with life. Salamanders and frogs would crawl out of the mud and hundreds of birds would fly up from their southern vacations to summer over. The native grass would grow and grow and wouldn’t stop until mid-summer. 

By June, the abandoned acres were a six-foot tall forest cut through with narrow footpaths of animals and children taking the long way home from school. Hidden within the grassy maze there were soft, pink petals of the wild roses and the shy white flowers of the berry vines. Bees and butterflies floated overhead and the days lasted well into the nights.

As the soft spring hardened into summer, the ground dried and cracked. Crickets and grasshoppers sprang forth with every step. The sky above domed over us like clear, blue bowl. The bugs sang their nightly chorus to chant us off to sleep. It seemed like the summers back then would go on forever. 

Then a cool morning would come and the edges of leaves of the willows would blush orange and red. The grasses would dry and topple, their secrets laid bare. After days of chatter, the birds would gather and go back to their southern homes. The rains would come, refilling shallow flats, waiting.