Over lunch, a friend spoke of the time in his life that he felt most at peace. He thought it might have been when he was a boy, and alone, would spend hours in his summer afternoons building makeshift damns on the creek near his family farm. Using twigs and stones and other found objects, he would create his unknown empire.
Rachelle also returned to her childhood, remembering excursions she would take to wooded areas in the small town where she grew up. Here, she would go on little archeological digs, returning home with her pockets full of pinecones, baby turtles and fragments of robin’s eggs.
Both people expressed a joy in discovery and creation, relishing the unhurried independence that sometimes shines into childhood.
I think that I felt at peace in movement. The day my training wheels came of my bicycle, and how with ease and confidence, I was able to rush down the streets of my neighbourhood. Or cross-country skiing, my mind quieted by the repetitive movements of my body, my lungs full of the perfectly cold air. Later, with moonlight cutting through the trees, we would ski down the hills that we had ascended just a few hours earlier, spaghetti sauce waiting at home.
And later, playing hockey, my body liberated by velocity and control. Skating so fast, stopping on a dime, spinning and shooting, my body now, on ice, the perfect extension of a boy’s optimism and imagination.