Every day after breakfast, my mother shooed us and our beloved, Dixie, out the back screen door and told us to come back before sunset. During those hours, the woods became ours, and we ruled them with a fragile coexistence alongside Mother Nature.
In our world, we were rulers of great and powerful kingdoms, brave knights of the Round Table, or maybe mayors of towns created out of sticks and pine needles. Our minds were really our only limitation. But no matter what we were pretending to be that day, our stories always started under the shade of the oak tree.
There was nothing particularly special about the tree. It was just an old oak set in a small clearing past a small pasture in the woods. However, that tree was the world to us.
Every day my sisters and I would race to the tree. It was a relatively simple race that always started with a quick sprint through the old barn that leads into a small pasture.
Once we had winded ourselves in the first leg of our daily race, we met our biggest obstacle, the big green fence. Now, for most, this fence was nothing extraordinary, but for me, it was challenging as a toddler.
My older siblings often cleared it in a matter of moments, and Dixie leaped it in a single bound, but I would usually fall from the top. I could always count on my trusty companion to return back to me, making sure I was okay, and help me up.
Once I cleaned the dirt off myself, it was a short walk to the shade of the tree. I can vividly remember all of our adventures underneath that magnificent tree. We were there with giant sticks battling each other, pretending we were knights fighting for our kingdom’s honor.