Terabithia

I'm definitely too old to play children's games.
Way too young to act like I'm old.
But I found Terebithia.

I was bouncing from left foot to right down a steep dirt path, my backpack whispering with each jolt on the mountainside.The ground was wet from yesterday's melted snow, the creek was loud with it. There I found Terebithia and an untamed wood.

The log bridge was thin and stripped of bark. It was more sturdy than it looked. With one foot I tested the stability of the wooden slat that spanned the rest of the crossing. I was as cautious as I was uninhibited. Yet death was so far away, even as I leapt through decomposing leaves up another steep path; they were like spiderwebs fused together, or Miss Havisham's old lace.

And then the huge stone, surprisingly warm as my fingertips pressed against it in passing. It was a living thing, the boundary between creek and wood, the four walls of my new sanctuary.

And now I sit and write, thinking about the ghosts of myself that dance around me. The brave ten year old child that I was, crossing the creek over and over again to prove that I could; the brooding teenager crouching dramatically at the top of the sunny stone; the seven year old hunting through the dirt and turning over rocks looking for bugs; the nine year old, trying to decide if it would be cruel to flick a bug off of her pants; the frightened eighteen year old wishing she wasn't so alone. And the Now Me trying to hold all of us in.

I found Terabithia.