I remember a place I used to visit when I was young. Had you asked me how I felt about it then, I would have answered "its special" and nothing more. I was a child who did not yet understand the importance and power that this place held.

To the eye it seemed ordinary, almost nothing. You would look right past it not knowing that it existed, or not knowing what you were supposed to be looking at. If you were looking at it when riding a bicycle down the road it was attached to all you would see was a large mound of light brown, almost orange soil. There were about three trees towards the back of the mound, shading it from the sun, so not much to see at all. Though it wasn't particularly beautiful or something memorable it always seemed special to me.

Behind the mound of soil was a miniature forest. There were about twenty trees at most, each with its own shade of green and brown. One would have a reddish trunk with a mix of blue and lime leaves, and the tree beside it would have a gray trunk with dark green leaves. Weeds grew everywhere that soil was present, except the mound itself. It looked like mismatched grass with small purple and orange flowers tucked firmly in between, competing with the grass for space to grow. If you verntured beyond the rows of trees there was a small pond in which minnows lived. Thin, tall trees lined the pond, stretching their leaves as far as they could, allowing only small patches of sunlight to shine on the cloudy water. This place always seemed unreal to me, like a place you hear about it books. The location where the main character gets to relax for a moment and forget everything else. I would lay in the mixture of weeds and grass, putting my head on a pile of leaves, and stare up at the clear blue sky wanting to live there. I would sit there for a couple of minutes, then the rain would come or my mother would call, forcing me to leave and head home.

I reluctantly would stand up and walk home, knowing I could always come back the next day. It wasn't until I had already left that town, never to return to my haven that I realized why it was a place of power. For my few friends and me this place was an escape from our chores and homework, a place we could go to blow off steam or to sit within its covering and cry into the soft soil. It was untouched by our parents and society.

This was my world. A relatively simple world, where the only problems were what tree to climb or how to get across the pond without getting wet, but my world all the same. The fact that it was mine, something I only shared with a few of my closest friends, was probably what made it most powerful. I had never had a place to call my own. Even my own room never felt like it was really mine because my family moved about every two years.

I wish I had paid more attention to the way the sunlight hit the leaves or the way the water sparkled if it had rained the day before. I wish I had known how important those details really were.

I eventually moved, just like I always do and had to leave my world behind. There had been talk of builders coming in and destroying the miniature forest to put a new house there. I hadn't completely understood what that meant for my haven, my own little world. I didn't realize that it would be gone and that I would never again get to run to the little pond or receive a new cut or bruise from climbing a tree. The day before I left that town I went to revisit the mound of soil and the forest hidden behind it.

Once I was already gone, too far away to protest anything, the builders came and destroyed it. The mound, forest, and pond all gone. The place once so powerful and full of life, destroyed. I guess that in the end, even the most powerful of places, can be turned to dust with only the flick of a finger. That means in the end I lost and the society I thought couldn't touch my world won. The large mound of light brown, almost orange soil and the forest behind it are lost to everyone except me, I remember.