My town, My home, My family

It’s weird how everyone is doing everything they can to leave this place behind. They are moving away, trying to find a place in the big cities where there are “great” opportunities to find a job, one of those where you just sit in a desk for eight hours straight either answering phone call after phone call or doing the very important job of calculating how much each of the employees is wasting every month in toilet paper so the company can save some pennies by buying a cheaper brand. How they, as kids, are wasting every minute of their day studying and studying so that they can get a perfect grade for a decent college where afterwards they will again waste every minute to get this goddamn degree to get a chance to work for an even better company with higher grade toilet paper.

     Why would anyone do that when you can have everything you want in this pretty tiny village? I mean yes it’s true, St. George isn’t the biggest of the cities and maybe it doesn’t have frozen yogurt places or casinos or giant amusement parks but it has everything else. It’s a beautiful little coastal town with not so many people to become a hindrance but enough so you can meet some and make new friends or find the one or just make a simple conversation about how this year has been a little rough and maybe grandpa’s crops won’t be as plentiful as the last batch was or how Mr. Jones’ nets came up empty this morning and we can’t have those delicious bream of his… Fish say little, don’t they?

     You would guess that they have many stories to share about how beautiful their home is. At least I'd thought so about the ocean, and how diverse their species are, but no. They just stand there, flailing about. I’ve tried starting a casual conversation once in a while with some of them but they keep ignoring me, maybe it’s my fault, they fear me so they want to keep to themselves or they are unable to speak out of the water? Yes, that would make sense actually. 

     Anyway, what I love about St. George is that the whole town is more or less a bigger than normal home, with many kids running around being cute and annoying, where they always hang out in the same places we hung out when we were kids, those really old swings where half of them are broken or are decaying after all those years of exposure to continuous interchanges between horrible thunderstorms and bright hot sunny days. Also that one seesaw that is oblique, just enough for one kid to lose its balance and fall down. This was the place where I first met one of my best friends. He was just jumping from tree to tree right on the outskirts of the playground because he was looking for a place to store his food. He was the one that talked to me first, asking for directions for the sturdiest tree I knew, which I didn’t know of since I wasn’t going around all day checking which tree is hospitable for a squirrel and which isn’t. At least that was a perfect opportunity for us to become friends.

     Whiskers… his real name is Peter, I just like calling him that... is kind of odd, most of the time he is grumpy, rarely, if ever, excited to be around, he just wants to be done with his chores and then just go stand on his favorite stump for the evening nibbling on a nice piece of walnut. I think he is more or less a grandpa now, so that would explain his behaviour despite that. He was always fun to be around; he had interesting stories to share with me about how different densities in the trees affect the condition of the nuts stored inside, or that one time he was this close to be eaten by a falcon… Good times.

     How every adult here is not only a parent of their own children, but also a parent to every other child of the town as well. Since we are all connected and have bonded over the years of the same generations living here, we raise each other’s children like they were our own; We speak to every adult like they were our own father or mother. Everyone is doing their best to help each other with whatever means they can, and those means were always in my eyes beautiful. Mr. Jones’ fresh fish, my grandpa’s fruits and vegetables and Ms. Lewers’ animal products, either milk from her enormous cows or eggs from one of her many hens. She was always one of the more giving people of the community. We all love her as much as she loves us, but nobody loves her as much as her own animals. As a kid I would always venture into her farm to speak with them as much as I could, in the beginning secretly, as it scared me that Ms. Lewers wouldn’t be pleased with me running around stressing them out all the time. Couldn’t be more wrong though, since she caught me once trying to hide in a pile of hay inside the barn, specifically where she holds her pigs, and I swear to god she would have never found me if it wasn’t for that little Johnny, a relatively new addition to her family, a young, joyful piglet and a teaser at that, who pointed me out to her just to have some giggles. After she found me instead of hurrying me out of there and back into my household, she took me in, make me a fresh lemonade and tell me that there is no reason to visit her farm friends secretly, I was welcome any time I wanted.

     That is how I expanded my family by adding Johnny, Blooper, Jessy, Ms. Piggy and Franko the pigs to my list of friends, they weren’t as fascinating as Whiskers who was full of wisdom and an immense amount of stories to share, but they weren’t as grumpy either, they would be my perfect pals to just hang out with, lying down in the hay or on the grass outside, just chilling and talking about the random things we notice every day, such as Ms. Lewers’ routine being always on point, seven o’clock in the morning every day waking up to feed them let them out, except the second Sunday of every month, where she instead would wake up at eight o’clock and then do the rest as normal; Or about that one woodpecker that would each day hit a different tree around the farm and never the same one twice until he was finished and then would start all over again. They were the perfect company to be around on a stressful day, compared to the cows, whose intelligence and level of conversation is that of a Nobelist, something I would have considered unimaginable. Betsy, Rosie, Dona and Harper possess such beautiful minds, that every day I spent with them was a day full of wisdom or knowledge, a day where I thought my mind would explode of the sheer volume of information I gathered. They knew everything, about the frequency which leaves fall off trees, how fast a patch of grass will regrow after being consumed by them, or when the fruits in the trees are perfect for picking, not too soft, not too firm either. I was never bored asking question after question since every time their answer blew my mind about how right they were just from paying a bit more attention to their surroundings than the rest of us, and how intricate the world around us is, even the parts where we consider being boring and just basic.

     The beauty of this little town would not stop only to its people or the beautiful shore, but it would continue to what was deeper inland, the forest. The forest was always a place that they ordered us as kids to avoid, for the dangers it could provide to those who didn’t know the landscape, or the animals calling it their home. That was exactly what I did as a child too, I would never go to it or even near it, since I have heard so many stories about what happened to little kids that didn’t listen to their parents and ventured deep into it. They were eaten by a bear or a pack of wolves, or even worse, the witch that lived in those woods would take them to her home and force them to eat so that they could become so fat and juicy that she would really enjoy eating them, or maybe even make them her slaves, cleaning her basement full of strange vases filled with different organs, and disgusting ichor dripping from the ceiling. Those stories were of course just fairy tales that parents would tell their sons and daughters just to scare them so much, that they would never even think about going there.

     Then I got older, a teenager looking for his next shot of adrenaline, and the woods would be a suitable candidate for this exact purpose. Since I was always a scared little kid though, my friend Whiskers would accompany me to my adventure, and that made it even more so fascinating and exhilarating. In the beginning everything was calm, just some squirrels jumping around, a couple rabbits here and there maybe if you weren’t making noise to scare them, and many many birds chirping. Deeper and deeper as we went through, I started seeing deer and boars, animals I’ve never seen before, a fact that made me happy since I could now talk to more of them and maybe learn their life stories as well. I met Julian and Casey as well, both deer with all sorts of tales to share with me. Julian had one of his antlers missing, he said that once he got trapped by one of those human contraptions and he was fighting so hard to escape, that he broke his antler off, yet that would never affect his good mood and he would always jump around and after many days of knowing each other, he would also become eager for my return so we can play hide and seek. Then suddenly, one day, I saw my first bear. I was so scared of her; I read somewhere that in order to be safe around a bear you should play dead, but I didn’t exactly remember the specifics at the moment, if it was a certain dead or if this should be done only to a specific bear, so I didn’t know if I should run like hell or stay put or fall to ground, and my body was going through all kinds of motions at this point. What I didn’t expect was that she would need my help, and she wasn’t coming to me with anger or fear, only with her need for help since one of her cubs had fallen down a sheer cliff and couldn’t get back up. From what I understand, word was going around the forest about this weird new human kid that could understand animals easier than others. So she saw an opportunity, and she took it. I couldn’t just stand there and do nothing, so I went to help her. She showed me exactly where the place was, and thankfully the little cub wasn’t in any danger, he was halfway through a cliff and the forest that continued downside, but he fell into a little outcrop where he could stand on but he wasn’t able to find a way either up or down. So I asked mama bear for a bit of time, and I rushed back to the town and straight to Mr. Jones’ house where I asked him for one of those long and sturdy ropes he used for his boat. He was happy to give it to me, albeit a little bit curious as to why I was in such distress and suddenly needed the rope. After acquiring the necessary rope I sprinted back to her, I was able to find a sturdy tree, one that Whiskers pointed out to me, and secured the rope safely around it. After that it was a scary descent, I never did anything like that before, only safely as a game with my friends by climbing trees and such, but never such a steep cliff, but I had no choice, a little cub buddy was in danger. Thus, I psyched myself up and began climbing towards the cub, thankfully with no incidents whatsoever, he was also terrified, he kept asking for his mom and that he wanted a hug. I wasn’t his mom but I could give him a hug, and so I did, grabbed him and started climbing back up, again successfully and with no problems in the meantime. Both the cub and mama bear were blissful to be back together again as a family, and it seemed after that I was also a part of it, since mama bear… now known as Bella… and me became the closest of buddies after that day, her thankful I saved her family, and me thankful I found another one.

     Because that’s what this is about, about this beautiful place with pretty surrounding woods and breathtaking oceans, it’s the fact that here is where you can find your family, this extended family of mine, the deer, the cows, the pigs, Whiskers, the people that live here and Bella, this happy family is the reason there is no place like St. George, and why I will never leave it behind.