I find that my childhood is connected very closely to the books I read. I dove into the worlds, became fully consumed by them. During my summers, I spent most of my break with my grandparents, who live in the Blue Ridge mountains. Their home is idyllic, nestled in the valley with a creek trickling past, surrounded by cow pasture and colorful mountains. I would read by the creek, on the porch, out in the pasture- anywhere within earshot of my Papa. When I visit now, I feel a sense of nostalgia for that period of my youth where anything was possible. I was not yet eleven years old, so the potential for my letter from Hogwarts to arrive was tangible. Narnia was the woods past the garden, where the trees grew wily and untamed. As I grew up, I lost some of that imagination. My eleventh birthday came and went, and my love for reading books shifted to a necessity to study books. The mountains, though, retain some of that magic. The trees are still gnarled in a way that invokes images of Hobbits and wizards, and the creek still speaks in that same soothing voice that lulled me to sleep in the bright summer sun. Now, though, the woods are like an old friend. One day, I will sit for a spell and visit with my childhood self. I will again adventure and become enveloped by the worlds that words created, but nature provided the backdrop and setting.

This place also provided a different sort of comfort. My grandparents both are very important to me, but my grandmother occupies a great part of my heart. I feel that we are bits of the same soul (not in the Heathcliff sort of way). Most of my habits that make me feel comfort come from her. I bake and watch crime shows because of her. I stay up way too late because of her. I am the person I am because of her.