Where I'm From

Growing Together: a prose poem[1]

The forest grew with me. It grew around me, it thickened, the trees got taller, wider, more numerous. The woods provided more shade. As my desire to explore grew, my understanding of the immensity of the forest grew. I hiked for miles around my house, seeing nothing but the trees, growing slowly in their expansive family. As my height grew, so did the height of the aspen in front of our deck. My parents cut it down when I left for college, for it obscured the view of the lake.

I would watch the storms coming over the divide from the west, growing in intensity as they gathered strength. I would watch the sky grow dark as ominous clouds crept over the twelve-thousand foot ridge seven miles away. I would watch the snow collect on the deck, watch the blanket grow from one, to two, to six feet high. When I grew enough, I strapped on snowshoes and went out into the quiet, feeling ten feet tall atop four feet of snow.

And the casinos grew; much too quickly. Too fast for nature to compensate. They grew like concrete and iron trees, square trees, fifteen-story trees, straight up out of the ground, overnight. The city itself grew. On Friday nights the inhabitants grew from the local population of 400 to the tourists and gamblers: 35,000. The lights from the city illuminated the sky to the south; the light grew brighter every year. The sky used to be darker. The stars used to be brighter.


[1] or something.