Returning without going back

The little girl is lying on her back in the middle of a shallow stream. The stream is just wide enough for her to spread her arms wide to the sides without touching the banks. Her clothes are soaked, a second skin only barely keeping her warm. Her shoes and socks sit haphazardly on the bank, waiting for her to carry them home. On the road nearby, cars drive by noisily but she doesn’t take any notice, they don’t even exist to her.

Her feet are upstream and her water-darkened hair flows away from her head like algae, moving freely in the current. Her eyes gently close so that all she can see is the dance of shadows behind her lids as the leaves stain the sunshine various shades of green. Her ears are just below the surface of the water, she listens to the music of the water flowing along the pebbled streambed and the dim echo of songbirds in the world above.

She hardly even feels the bottom of the stream beneath her back, there’s just enough mud under the rocks to allow them to sink down into the most perfectly formed mattress. She spreads her fingers and toes as wide as she can, sighing as she revels in the caress of the water flowing through and around. She breathes slowly and deeply, enjoying the peace that she finds noplace else. The world of school, siblings, noise and obligation feels miles away as she sinks into the womb that nature has prepared for her.
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The most vivid memory I have of childhood has no date. I know I was in primary school—we moved away from my Eden the summer before sixth grade. But when I close my eyes, I can easily return to that streambed. I must have gone there often, because I don’t associate it with any one season. I remember the smell of spring rain just as clearly as the scent of rotting autumn leaves or the heat of summer sun.

When the chaos of home grew too much, I would announce to my mom that I was going outside to play. I’d cross the porch, walk down the steps, then head three blocks to my elementary school. I’d cut diagonally across the playground, skirting around the swings and monkey bars, and into the woods. I could play there for hours. The stream bubbled through the trees, shallow enough to wade through, and there was one spot where everything felt perfect.

Often, people return to childhood places only to find them smaller or duller than they remembered. This stream is no longer as wild or pure as it once was—but then, neither am I. I’ve been back. And though it felt almost sacrilegious to lie my grown body down in the water, I did return to that spot.

It’s not deep enough anymore to feel the same. And I don’t think the stream and I know one another well enough now to take such liberties. So instead, I remove my socks and shoes, sink my toes into the cool mud below the pebbles, and lie back on the bank with my eyes closed, soaking in the light. In that moment, my mind goes silent, and I become again who I once was.

As an adult, I’ve learned there are words for the pieces of that memory. The smell of spring rain is petrichor. The dappled light through trees is komorebi, in Japanese. There are so many labels for the sensations that, to me, all add up to one simple word: home.

In that stream, I was fully present. I had returned to nature. I had returned to where I belong. Even now, when modern life becomes too much—when my pulse pounds in my ears and the hyperventilation of a panic attack begins to build—I close my eyes and throw myself back through the years to that girl in the stream. My breathing slows. My pulse steadies. That memory is precious. It’s a life-saving medicine for when my soul aches.

Rationally, I know I may never feel quite that peaceful again. But each time I leave my house and lose myself in the forest, I feel the echoes of home. I am as much a part of nature as the snail nibbling away at the strawberries I should have picked yesterday. I am not made to live within four walls, under electric lights that mimic the sun, my ears buzzing with the hum of appliances, my nose filled with the artificial scents of cleaning supplies or neglected chores.

Still, I bring nature inside. Our pets track it in after every rain. My houseplants lean into the light that comes through the windows. And when I go outside now, I must push through years of domestication telling me it’s too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry, too… uncomfortable.

When I was small, I often imagined my future life. One detail never changed: I would live in a small house on the edge of the forest with a stream running past. I would follow the rhythms of nature, spending more time outside than in. I would forage, grow my own food, live simply.

I have accepted that I will most likely never live in that house. I may never lead the fully nature-led life I imagined. And while I grieve the woman I dreamt I’d become, I accept one thing as true:
I must remain in constant movement toward her.

I may never recreate that life perfectly. But I can listen to my body as the seasons change, and slow down when nature tells me to. I can push through discomfort in search of those sacred moments when I can once again sink into the feeling of home. I can rebuild my relationship with nature—and encourage my daughter to build one of her own. I can put down roots in this far-away corner of the world. I can use my spare time and energy to build a life, for myself and those around me, where the natural world isn’t something outside of us but something we feel connected to.

A place where we feel at home.