Lookingglass Valley Dreams 1(The Field)

Part 1 in my magical memories series✨

Photo by Dmitrii Nor on Unsplash

I want to talk to you guys today about some of my happiest moments that I've had thus far here in this troubled but beautiful world. Why? You might ask. Well, firstly, because the entire world in need of something uplifting right now. Not only that, but my essays have often focused a lot on the unpleasant or traumatic parts of my story. This, admittedly, is very much on purpose and by design. I've discussed before how I started out writing because I was so isolated and alone, struggling with so many complex and multi layered problems and anxieties that nobody close to me could even fathom, let alone truly empathize with on a real human level. Through my scribbled efforts, I have grown and learned about myself. Worked through so much trauma and hurt feelings that had been held inside of my heart and mind for so many years, slowly poisoning my spirit a small drip at a time.

Letting these things release and be purged from my soul-memory was exhilarating and freeing. I Discovered an entire realm within my own self with the shocking revelation that I am neurodivergent, and then I subsequently found out that my neurodivergence was something that could perfectly explain so many missing pieces of my puzzle and answer so many painful lingering questions that had gone unanswered for my entire life. This discovery was so powerful that it caused a literal reframe of my entire personal history within my burdened mind. Suddenly I was flooded with grace and forgiveness for myself. It was as profound as the moment in the Wizard of Oz when it switches from grayscale to Technicolor in one blinding flash. Even in the midst of the world I inhabit combusting around me, this colorful discovery has sustained me.

But I don't simply want to talk about the happy times just from the past few years when I've been able to start untangling this giant en-fuckening of my mind and heart that has built up bit by bit my entire life. Those gains have been revelatory, but they don't tell the full story of who I am. I have often found so much joy even in the strangest and most unexpected places. Sometimes even within the darkest moments of my life, I have found those stray bright and sparkling moments of unhinged joy. These moments often get left by the wayside when I write my stories out, only by virtue of the fact that I have to consider brevity in my essays and also because for the general purposes of those stories that I'm writing, I'm usually addressing the darker and less joyful parts of my story. I don't need to work through any trauma associated with the good stuff, after all.

But lately, my friends, I have been doing a lot of traveling down memory lane, revisiting those pure and shining moments suspended there in the fractals of time; holding tight to them for any measure of succor they can offer. This has helped me greatly. But amidst all of this reliving of happy times, I've realized that -wow- in doing things this way, the unfortunate side effect has been that my stories are somewhat lacking in those happy moments. That brings me grief to realize because part of my purpose in writing is to leave a self written record of my personal story for my children. If that is at least the partial purpose of my writing, then I have unintentionally robbed them somewhat of experiencing those joys through my words later in life. I have also somewhat flattened myself into a one dimensional being. I don't want my children to read my stories and see mainly tragedy and hopelessness. What kind of a legacy would that be? Would reading only about my struggles cause them to doubt the existence of goodness and beauty in this world, thereby robbing them of the opportunities to find those very elemental things in their own lives? This simply will not do.

In that spirit, I have decided that I'll be authoring a whole series about small happy moments in my life that stand out in sharp luminous relief against the much darker backdrop of so many others. So here are a few moments in time of my own that stand out in their sheer brilliance…

I remember playing in the field behind the house. Like, directly behind our house, in fact. Not even a cursory fence delineated where our lot ended and the field began. That's what we all called it, children and adults alike: The Field, like it should be capitalized and titled. Every child of school age in Lookingglass Valley knew exactly what you meant when you said you would meet them at The Field. Despite the somewhat utilitarian title, The Field consisted of more than just meadowlands or grazing pasture. It was largely comprised of large wild grown tracts of tall, dry grass, straw, wild rye and various assorted other brambles and berries in fits and bursts interspersed throughout randomly. Tall waving stalks that would sometimes reach high enough to offer a small child full cover to hide away securely within their dry raspy embrace.

Carved out through the grass was a wandering semi-circle of hard packed clay that spanned about half the entire area of The Field. This was a roughly hewn BMX and dirt bike track. We all called this simply the track, no capitals needed in this case. Used regularly enough that no stray grass seed dared take root in the hard compressed soil, the track consisted of several small jumps and one very large jump that everyone just called the “big jump” for purposes of geographical identification, ie: “I'll meet you in The Field at noon, right by the big jump.” Directly after the big jump, there was a shallow depression filled with tires for the purpose of hopping with your bike or using as stepping stones of a sort during the torrential rains that flooded it with water most of the year.

We played endlessly around the tire swamp as we all called it, and I shudder when I look backwards into my youthful recollections and I remember just how often we would splash around that flooded puddle, saturating our durable little child bodies with slick tire permeated cancer-water and gobs of petroleum laced clay. In the springtime, frogs would lay translucent masses of eggs, suspended like stray baubles floating in the dirty murk. When they would hatch, we would catch mason jars full of tadpoles and watch them as they developed into fully formed adult frogs. This process always fascinated young me no matter how many times I witnessed it. Sometimes one of the other feral country kids in the area would pilfer from a father's workshop and they would bring some 2x4’s or better yet, plywood out to the tire swamp, where we would construct floating pallets to sit on top of the tires so we could traverse the swamp with minimal muddiness. It usually didn't work out that way no matter how earnest our efforts.

Directly behind the big jump there grew, side by side, two enormous Douglas fir trees. Untrimmed and unmanaged, their branches beckoning young daredevils to fearlessly scale their great heights. The most perfect and simple tree climb imaginable, you could use the natural ladder inside the canopy, and climb almost entirely to the top, where you could sit unnoticed, ensconced on all sides by sweet smelling pine needles, easily braced by the sturdy limbs even near the apex of those needly boughs; observing everything from your pine fortress like it was your own personal lookout tower. I used to pretend I was a queen in a castle, besieged by invading enemies on all sides, and that I was perched up on the buttresses, surveying my kingdom like some voyeuristic evergreen monarch. Dense, and usually water saturated pine cones became cannonballs fired from tall turrets. I was a firm but benevolent ruler and a fierce defender of my fiefdom up in my woody green tower.

Towards the back of The Field on the right hand side was a small baseball diamond that was used for local T-ball and softball teams to play on during their seasons. We didn't spend a whole lot of time there because neither my sister or myself were very inclined towards organized sports. I've never been a big joiner of anything really, and most of the kids who were interested in playing sports were the type of kids I was the very most invested in keeping as far away from myself as possible.

The real gem of The Field, however, existed at the farthest reaches of the left-hand side of that dry and grassy expanse: The abandoned and clearly haunted shack. The haunted shack was, of course, not haunted. Not in any way other than the way that all abandoned places that have once sheltered human souls are after they are left behind and fall into disrepair. It was a place which was specifically forbidden by almost every parent, and therefore offered all of us children the inescapable allure of harmless rebellion. It was the 80’s and child neglect was tres chic, so none of us ever had to worry about a wayward parent trekking into our sovereign world. They were all back in the warm inviting houses probably counting their blessings that we stayed out from underfoot as much as we did. We were all fascinated by the haunted shack, which still contained the tattered remnants of the lives of whichever humans had last inhabited that desolate place.

Most windows were at least partially broken and the door hung helplessly on half a rusted hinge, providing not even the barest pretense of security. There was a large open pit in the floor that was filled with the detritus of some of the past humans that once dwelled within this now condemned and forgotten space. We would dig through old damp picture books filled with other people's loved ones, paperbacks, cheap harlequin novels that were apparently some past tenant's fierce obsession. We spent a lot of time at the haunted shack, pillaging, hanging out, and creating legends with which to terrify the younger and more gullible amongst us. The satanic panic was happening in the distant world of the credulous adults around us, and that fervor filtered down to us, informing our pretend play ideas and infecting our imagination with wild, terrifying yet thrilling possibilities.

It's bittersweet, my friends, to think back upon all of this glorious pure and magical memory and to realize that I was simply too young to truly appreciate the blessings that were bestowed upon me at the time. I can remember, so vividly, the strident longing that I always had in my heart for taking a trip into town. The big town of Roseburg, that is. Chortle. I live there today, in the city proper, and it is no great shakes, that's for damn sure. I would give my left arm to be able to give my children the same magic that I grew up with. Of course, that's impossible. I know that. My magic would never be their magic, and it's most likely that they would follow in my own restless heart longing to leave that rural place as soon as humanly possible.

That's the rub, folks. Old magic doesn't transfer over to the next generation, because everyone's gotta find their own personal sparkling bursts of it along their own individual journeys through this dimensional plane. Still, a girl can wistfully dream, right? They say that you don't know what you've got until it's gone, and that is a fact you will never hear me dispute. When you're possessed of the wild unbridled arrogance of youth, you assume that everything going on in the world out of your line of sight must be more magical, more exciting, more... more. Truth is though, you would be hard pressed to ever find anything more magical than the enchanted places I had at my fingertips every day of every week for so many years.

❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥

Hello, my dear readers, and Thank You for taking the time out of your life to honor me by reading my stories. You guys don't even know how much your camaraderie sustains me in these turbulent times. Remember to take care of yourselves out there, and to look out for those who are even more vulnerable than you might be. Small acts of kindness and generosity can go further in this world than the grandest of gestures if they are offered freely and without expectation of recompense. Be kind. Be safe. Hold the line and hold onto your humanity out there. That is something that never be taken, only given away. As always, if you can afford to do so, please consider going paid. I'm trying to make myself a little more self reliant so I can be able to sustain myself and my children without having to count so much on external factors that are out of my control. Not fond of subscriptions? You can also help support my writing with a one time appreciation donation of any amount at:

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Thanks again y'all! Peace ✌🏼

bPNWc 😻