Beyond the Back Yard: The Roots of a Green Life

If you've had a relatively happy childhood, I think that in adulthood, you're always trying to recreate or recapture the happy moments, and revisit the special places of your youth--if you can. For my husband, who grew up sailing with his family just north of New York City, he's still at his happiest when he's out on the water, and if he can't be out on the water, he's reading sailing magazines to relax after a long day at work. My own childhood, although also happy, gave me a very different view of peacefulness and personal bliss. Instead of the water, it was the woods.

I grew up in a small town in Connecticut, on a quiet cul-de-sac called Willow Lane--even though there wasn't a single willow tree in sight. Our neighborhood had no shortage of other trees, though, as all of the houses on the north side of the street had the woods to border their back yards, a sprawling range of trees that ran for miles and miles.

My bedroom window faced the forest. Each night, before climbing into my canopy bed, I would stand on my ladybug stool and peer out into the woods. In summer, my nose pressed up against the screen, I could see the little flashes of fireflies, traveling in drunken, weaving patterns around and about the trees. I'd fall asleep to the sound of peepfrogs and wake up to the first bird songs of morning.

About a hundred feet into the woods, just off the well-worn path, was a boulder the size of a Volkswagen Beetle, with the words MAGIC ROCK painted in white capital letters on its side. No one knew who had painted the words, but everyone knew the wishing procedure: Stand atop the boulder, slowly turn around three times, and make a wish--only one wish per forest visit, and no wishing on the way back out!

My sister, eight years my senior, introduced me to the forest. Each December, she would drive me in a wheelbarrow deep into the snowy woods, where we would select the perfect miniature Christmas tree for her bedroom. Carefully, she would dig around its roots, and we would plop the whole package, soil and all, into the wheelbarrow. Later that night, the little tree would sit in a bucket on her desk, bedecked in our homemade garlands of popcorn and cranberries, with a simple strand of white lights. After the holidays, my sister would transplant the tree to our back yard, at the very border of the woods. By the time she went off to college, there were five fir trees on the border of our yard.

In spring, when my sister returned from college, she took me into the forest again. The ground was soft underfoot, and the trees were in full bloom. Kneeling on the bank of a stream, we scooped out frog eggs, pasty-white jelly masses with black dots for centers. We carried them home in beach pails to study, and in a short time, the eggs separated and sprouted long, wiggly tails. Then it was back to the stream again, to send the tadpoles on their way.

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In my sister's absence, my father became my guide to the woods. Although he tended three gardens in our own yard (two for flowers, one for herbs), he took it upon himself to be a caretaker of the forest. I accompanied him on his missions: clearing piles of leaves from the dirt paths, weeding out fallen trees, and with our bare hands, scooping out cold mud and twigs from a blocked brook until the water ran freely again.

On weekends, bright and early, my father and I would head out into the forest, followed at a great distance by our cat, Snoopy, whom I suppose was trying to maintain an air of feline independence. Snoopy never got within fifty feet of us, but then again, he never ventured off on his own path, either. We'd stop every now and then to make sure he was following, and he'd stop and pretend that he wasn't.

On our journeys through the woods, my father would point out different plants and trees, insects and animals. Over the fallen tree--an impromptu bridge across the first pond on our journey--past birch ("white bark) and mountain laurel ("white blossoms"), we'd make our way past thickets and tangles. Skirting poison ivy ("leaves of three, let them be") and the hawthorn bush ("needles sharp enough for sewing"), we'd at last come to the meadow.

Crouching amidst the tall grass and wildflowers ("Shh...not a sound"), we would almost always be witnesses to something extraordinary: a jackrabbit bounding about, as if on springs; a garter snake basking on a rock ("he won't hurt you"); a pheasant strutting cockily, looking for its lunch; a stately stag--despite its size, so shy and soft; a Native American arrowhead to take home in my pocket; the Big Old Oak, with its trunk so fat, it would take five children to encircle it with their arms.

As I got older (about ten or so), I got bolder, braving the forest on my own. A latchkey kid, I'd make secret trips into the woods when no one was at home. Once, startled by the sound of people a short distance away, I broke into a run and caught my leg on a jagged branch. Blood pulsed from the deep gash, but there was no time to stop. At home, I put on thick bandages and told my mom it was a gym class injury. I still have the scar, a slight, dotted line up my left shin.

On another secret solo visit, undaunted by the leg injury, I brought along my father's binoculars and hiked out to the farthest pond. Panning the scene at the opposite bank, I spied nothing new with my enlarged vision. Then I saw it--my heart jumped. It was my own first name, carved large and deep on a thick tree trunk. Preoccupied with conjuring up neighborhood suspects, I lost my footing on a mossy rock, catching myself just before taking an unexpected dip in the pond. That's when I heard it--a single, horrible "plop." The binoculars had broken free from the shoulder strap and had sunk to the bottom of the pond.

That night after dinner, my mother went to her studio to paint, while my father went to the living room to immerse himself in a book. I tiptoed in, trying not to shiver.

"Dad?" I whispered. He looked up over his eyeglasses. "Remember how you always say that I can tell you anything?"

"Yes?" He shut his book and looked immediately serious. "What's the matter?"

"And remember how you said you'd always love me, no matter what I did?"

"Yes, yes! Joy, please, what is it?"

I confessed the whole sordid tale, then braced myself to hear my punishment. But my dad didn't yell--he sighed in relief! The binoculars weren't that important, he told me; it was my safety that concerned him. He told me firmly not to go into the woods alone again.

Together, the next day, we retraced my journey, and I brought him to the sound of The Plop. With a long tree branch, he poked and prodded around the bottom of the pond. Then he tapped at something. With one long, careful lift, he raised the branch. The renegade binoculars emerged from the water, dripping with mud and covered with leaves.

After the binoculars were professionally cleaned, my father gave them to me to keep, for future forest trips--together.

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The winter I turned eleven, I still didn't know how to ice skate. All of my friends were twirling and leaping on the town lake, but I was too embarrassed to learn to skate in public. One early Saturday morning, with my sister's old skates tied together and slung over my shoulder, I followed my dad to the Binocular Pond. He threw a large rock at its center. It thumped and skidded to a stop. "Safe to skate." After we laced up our clunky, impossible skates, he held both of my hands and glided backwards, and I clumsily trudged forwards and sideways on the blades. Around and around we went. He'd free me and I'd falter. Finally, exhausted from all the legwork, I rested on a rock while my father etched smooth, grand figure eights on the ice, not one sound except for his skates, clicking and wooshing across its surface. Snow had carpeted the forest with white velvet and the trees wore a hundred million twinkling diamonds, glittering from every branch. When morning melted into afternoon, we headed home for lunch. I didn't master skating that January, but I will never forget that day's perfection.

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Although in our hearts, the forest was "ours," it didn't really belong to us at all. By the time I was in college, the woods in its entirety was sold to developers. The summer after my senior year of college, when I went home to my parents' house, I looked out the window of my childhood bedroom, only to see the single line of trees, a mere screen between our yard and the new yard behind ours. On the very edge of our property, where the woods once began, I could see the little ring of rocks that marked the burial site of Snoopy the cat. The grave was shaded by my sister's five "miniature" Christmas trees, by then so tall, they dwarfed our house.

But the forest is gone now; all of it, gone. Magic Rock, the tadpole stream, the wildflower meadow, Binocular Pond. In their places are new landmarks. Swing-sets and swimming pools, circular driveways, three-car garages, front yards and back yards, houses and more houses. For miles and miles.

It was many years ago that we sold our house. My parents have long since passed away. My sister and I live on opposite ends of the United States. Much time has passed; many things have changed. But when I close my eyes at the end of a long day, it's the old woods at Willow Lane that I'm picturing. I'm at the very edge of it, and I'm starting down the dirt path, following my dad, just as I drift off to sleep.

Dedicated to my father, Charles Johnson (1924-2002), who lived a green life long before it was the popular thing to do, and perfected the art of kindness.

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