There's a house in middle-of-nowhere West Virginia that has become sacred to my cousins and I. It rests between two edges of wooded area that encloses the large, hilly backyard. This backyard contains not only woods, a small horse shed, and a very huge pine tree, but also almost all of our childhood memories together. We played on a broken, makeshift swing set. We learned to climb to the very top of our favorite pine tree. We found the ruins of an old brick house in the woods. We built forts, played in leaves, ran until we couldn't anymore, and caught tadpoles in the old bathtub behind the shed. Our adventures started here and almost always ended with a bonfire and roasted marshmallows, or occasionally a cut or bruise.
Grandma yelling at us to wear long pants and shirts to protect us from poison ivy did not stop us from crossing the property line in the woods. Of course we never got lost because the woods sloped downward and to find the house all you had to do was follow the hill back up. By the time you hit the field in the back of the woods you knew to turn back. One of my favorite memories is finding a fort that two of my older cousins built eight years after they built it. They never told us where they built it except that it was on the property line. My cousin Yancie and I had stopped to rest at it's ruins and remembered what it was! The woods made the backyard never-ending along with our adventures.
I have so many memories in this backyard with people who are not only related to me, but are also my closest friends. The house belongs to my grandma and grandpa and most of it was also built by them and other family members. As I grew up, I lived in a lot of houses and moved numerous times, but this house never, ever changed. The backyard is where my cousins and I grew together. It contains our childhood together. It matters the most now because even though most of us are growing into adults, there's no way we'd pass up a chance to find a new adventure in the backyard of our grandparents familiar house.
