Yukyung Bang/Seventh Post/Narrative Composition Tuesday 9-11 a.m.

201301511 Yukyung Bang

 

not yet titled

 

"Is this it?," I said to myself. I was not disappointed. Rather, I was surprised. But after a while, I said to my self, 'Well, 12 years were long enough to transform everything.' I looked around slowly. The woods seemed much smaller than when I was here the last time. The top of the tall trees which had seemed so high to meet the sky were now in view. The paths that led through the trees to the back gate of the apartment complex were overspread with branches. They got smaller and shorter as well. It felt like the place fell under the shrinking charm. In fact, it was the exact opposite: I had grown too much.

 

I stepped in the woods. A very narrow winding path, which was soon divided into several smaller paths, seemed to greet me saying, "Welcome back!" The gentle breeze wafted the song of birds to my ears. Enjoying the softness under my feet, I started to walk along the path. It was dim in the woods as the trees cut out the sunlight. But the sunbeams managing to filter through the leaves were enough to light my may. The fresh earthy smell filled my nostrils gently. I breathed in deeply, and the smell of the pine trees replaced the smell of soil. As if to prove a well-known fact that a smell can bring on a flood of memories, my memory became clearer and clearer with each breathe and took me back to 2001.

 

When I was 8 years old, my sister and I walked through the woods on every weekday morning and evening. It was a shortcut from home to my school. Well, it must have been a shortcut, considering the other route normally took about 15 minutes to get to school. However, I used to get so distracted in the woods that I would spend more than 30 minutes there, chasing a squirrel, stepping on dry leaves, and playing with dirt. My older sister, who was also my best friend back then, always tried her best to stop me, but ended up joining me, digging up the roots of grass of which name we did not know. I spend more time playing in the woods on my way back home from school as there was no sister to stop me, and no teacher to scold me when I appeared with dirty hands. When I was alone in the woods, I liked to walk off the path, making my own way, and sit down leaning my back against a big tree. If I was wearing thin clothes, I could felt the roughness of tree barks. Then, I would play with pine cones, flinging them as far as I could and enjoying the sound of them rolling down. I stopped doing it when I finally felt hungry, stood up, laughed at my butt print surrounded by pine needles, and headed home.

 

Apart from being a pleasant way to school, the woods proved its worth during the winter vacation. When snow was lying thick on the ground, my friends and I ditched the playground and headed to the woods with huge plastic sacks and boxes we found at the dump. There were gentle slopes here and there in the woods covered with snow. We loved the slide at the playground, but we preferred ones that nature made for us. Of course, sliding down the slopes on a plastic sack made our butts hurt as the ground was rough and uneven because of the tree roots and small stones. But we didn't stop. We slided, fell down, rolled, and rested in the white snow until sacks got torn or our feet got numb because of the cold. Before going home, my friends and I always made a pinky swear to meet in the woods the next day.

 

However, I couldn't keep that promise. Before the winter vacation was over, my family moved to another city in which I lived until I was 19 years old. Even though I didn't remember much of the town because I lived there for such a short time of about two years, I had missed the woods so much. And I finally visited the woods after the college entrance exam. Surely, some things had changed. How hard I tried to walk as slow as possible, it took less than 10 minutes to get to the end of the path. There were benches here and there that I didn't remember. The slopes were replaced with steps to prevent people from falling down. But even after all these years, the woods were still there, keeping the memories alive and waiting for me to come back.

 

12 years were long enough to transform everything, but not long enough to blur my fond memories of the woods.