INEBRIATE OF NATURE

Forgetting Bumblebees

Help me remember

by author

I grew up in a house on a hill in the mid-Maine woods. We called our hill a mountain because who wants hills when you can own mountains?

Plus, as T.S. Eliot says,

“In the mountains, there you feel free.”

My parents painted the house black. So, it was a house made of midnight in the middle of the woods.

The driveway fell straight up the mountain and died there, deathly steep. Come winter, your car had to achieve forty miles an hour (sixty was better) if you were interested in reaching the top.

This made the driveway more of a ski jump, which means my childhood was futuristic:

When I played outside, I had to avoid getting killed by flying cars.

I was doing this that day, cheating death on the day of my first memory. I sat on the lawn, doing what little living children do.

I was looking at whatever:

• grass and dandelions,
• my feet,
• my hands,
• the lovely house-shaped blob of darkness that was my house,
• and all of it was strange, wonderful, and new.