This has little to do with theology, or with anything for that matter, I just feel like writing and sharing it:
I loved the woods in my old neighborhood - walking, running, climbing gullies, jumping over creeks. And to this day, in my memory, they feel as much like home as the house I grew up in. A few months ago, I was down in Enochville without my wife or the kids and I parked beside the woods in my old neighborhood. I walked down into the woods and looked around for a bit. It hadn't changed too much. Things came rushing back and it made it seem in that moment that no time had passed. The remnants of an old tree house were amazingly still present and I instantly recognized the bends in the little stream as well as some of the gullies. I thought about walking to see if the old VW Bug that had been left in a gully some years ago was down there, but I thought about how much effort that would take for an out of shape adult (as an 11-year-old, it was quite easy).
The thing is, it felt like home, as much as my home church or (I imagine) my room in the house I grew up in. But I had a disconcerting thought as I was standing in the woods remembering: as a kid, I was simply romping through the woods. As an adult, I was trespassing. As a kid, it's expected. As an adult, it may seem a little creepy to some people. With that thought going through my head, I trudged back up to the truck. I felt, at once, happy to be in that place and sad that I could never be in that place again, so to speak.
The thing about it, the "woods" were nothing more than a few acres of undeveloped land with a little creek running through it. I am dumbfounded to think now that we routinely drank the water from that little stream. I am sure that several stomach bugs I had as a kid were a direct result of drinking that water. We used to go down to the woods, dam up the stream, climb the gullies, play a variation on tag which involved diving over fallen trees or trudging under them in the stream, and just run riot for a few hours. I remember one time in the middle of winter Scott, Troy, Michael, and myself went down to the woods and the little pools of water had frozen over. We were walking over them and one of them cracked under Michael. He fell into water that was probably no more than a foot deep. He freaked out and so did Troy, who acted like Michael was dying (Troy is Michael's older brother). I stepped onto the ice, grabbed Michael and pulled him out. They both thanked me for saving his life. It was fun to be a kid.
As we got older, we began riding our bikes more and a friendly older couple in the neighborhood let us ride through their yard into the woods. We made a good number of trails and for a while had a lot of fun. Then, suddenly it seems in retrospect, we grew up - drivers' licenses, jobs, other stuff. We stopped hanging out together. And the woods no longer hold any mystery for me, at least the little bit of wooded land in my old neighborhood doesn't. Memories yes, but no mystery. Now I imagine that the deep forests in the mountains or in the Northwest would probably hold some mystery, but the "woods" in Tanglewood I see now with adult eyes. Littered with trash, empty liquor and beer bottles, and full of briars, spiders, and other stuff that I don't want to mess with.
Maybe part of heaven is being in those places that are home, those places that are so familiar that when we are in them, it feels like time stops. I have found that those places are rare and precious. There are new places that evoke that feeling, and thank God for that, because the life of a United Methodist minister is all about new places. But, I will say that a dirt road on a warm evening, the sound of birds and crickets, and the smell of honeysuckle does it every time, no matter what the geographical location. Of course, the cliche holds true: there's no place like home. I just hope that heaven has a nice patch of woods up there.
