“There are lights in the woods in which I played.”
A long, long time ago, when I was
much younger, this first line (or perhaps title) of a potential poem
floated into my mind. I wrote it down, and it has sat quietly in my
files ever since, a bookmark of a theme I mull over time and again.
It was interesting enough, a bit
clunky, but it was the image (and corresponding emotions) that have
remained with me through the years.
The image? My woods, in Acton,
Massachusetts, not really a wilderness to any extent but a lovely
forest to my youthful soul, were being torn into by builders and
developed into houses and yards for future tenants. Through the
trees, where I had once seen only darkness and mystery, I was now
able to spot less-mysterious, twinkling porch lights.
It was inevitable. Acton is only 25
miles from Boston, a tempting suburban option for the commuters who
head into the city every day, and our family was only an early wave
of what was to come in town, a steady stream of people buying up
available land and housing.
The emotions? I guess it was an
early existential crisis for me, of seeing a treasured natural
playground of my early years bulldozed and taken away, and of the
enduring and inexorable pace of change in the world, and of nature
under attack. If my childhood forest could be sold and trashed, was
anything sacred?
The pace of change ... development
... a return to places we once knew ...
This potential poem, and ideas behind
it, has again floated into my mind as I returned this past weekend to
Burlington, Vermont for the first time in seven years, the lakeside
community in the far northeast which has constantly been rated high
on all the right lists.
I've always remembered the town
fondly, and enjoyed the two years that my wife and I lived there,
reveling in its sense of community and artistic sense, the abundance
of alternative food options (the town has a designated “hippie
cooler” in its main market) and love of festivals and music, while
learning to abide the long, cold winters, and gray skies that
dominate the landscape from November through early April.
To its credit, as I roll and walk
about town, I do not sense a great deal of tearing up and change in
the area. A few new restaurants here, a nice sparkly new mural near
the parking garage, and local banks swallowed up by the national
banking tycoons. But all in all, the downtown remains vibrant, and
people still seem to revel in their good food and sense of joi de
vivre. During my few days here, I've enjoyed catching up with my
good friends out and about in the city.
Burlington, Vermont is far removed
from the city-state of Bangkok where I have spent the last three
years ... this biggest city of a smallish state feels accessible and
intimate, happy with its place in the universe and with what is there
already, within a larger culture that stresses onward movement and
the “next big thing.”
Bangkok, on the other hand, has
always felt “on the move,” in constant motion, constantly
building and developing and replacing. There are identifiable
neighborhoods and landmarks but restaurants and coffee shops and
other places come and go with alarming frequency. All is change
within a culture that prizes tradition.
To be fair, change is not always in
the places we go, but who we have become in the interim between the
past and the present. The developers and construction workers tear
into the places we know in the earth, but in the end we can choose
our bifocals; One person's playground is another's house, and those
twinkling lights can guide us home.
Thus, perhaps the bigger question is
the ways in which I have changed in the seven years since I've left
Burlington.
I guess I'd say I've grown a little
wiser, more confident in my abilities and a little calmer and happier
over the last seven years; yet I sure do feel the pain of aging a lot
more than I once did. Early 40's has turned into “approaching 50”
and my body seems to be rebelling.
But I come back to Burlington and
feel at once at home and different, with more stories to tell, more
scars, an expanded universe, and the knowledge that I am headed
elsewhere, on the move back across the globe to a place I have come
to know, which is now home for better or for worse.
“There are lights in the woods
in which I played.”
Champlain Lake Sunset |
I am in some ways the same writer who
scribbled that line in my journal long ago, but I am an older and
wiser version of that boy who wondered at the frightening changes
that were crashing into his universe. I am able to remember the
forests I have roamed and hold them tightly in my heart, see the
trees that remain, and imagine the lights as something else, perhaps
even stars that could guide us to what could be.
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