Attempting to update monthly. Short and pointless.

Everybody has a certain place in their life that feels like a part of them. More than "feels like home," the mere thought of this place fills the body with excitement and anticipation and one can't help but smile. A question to regular readers, lurkers, and stumblers-upon: Can one have a memory feel like more than home, or is it destined to be a place that fills one with a feeling of content and peace?

I have both places and memories that ease my soul, shake the cobwebs from my thoughts, and clear the tears from my eyes. I often wonder, is it the memories that make the place, or the place that makes the memories?
My family has held a plot of land of generations, a summer retreat, if you will. I spent most of my youth running wild among the Queen Anne's Lace and clover with Summer rays warming my bare legs and arms. There's a large, steep hill that bottoms out at a creek, and my siblings and I used to take turns flying down the hill on a bike without breaks and catching each other at the bottom before we tumbled into the chilly, swift-moving water. Several times we kids found ourselves explaining our dripping clothes to our displeased mother. At the top of the hill, beside the house, is a garage, seemingly so modern and out-of-place in the rustic, wooded setting, boasting its existence with a rolling garage door that competed with the grass for the brighter shade of green. Within that garage was a treasure-trove of forbidden access. Old tractors, snowmobile runners, batteries, shovels, plows, the left-over mechanics of generations of forgotten projects. We had carved into the hillside room to grow raspberries, pumpkins, zucchini, and sunflowers that towered above our home whose heads weighed 15 pounds at least. Behind the house was a flat plain, perfect for circling four-wheelers, flying kites, setting off fireworks, and staring into the stars. Every summer we dug out a pit and roasted hot dogs, corn, and marshmallows for dinner. A small apple orchard rests hidden in a dip of the hillside like a secret, the apples small, but sweet. Two ponds round out the property, muck-laden and riddled with the "plop," of frogs escaping our eager grasp. No matter how long we sat at the water's edge with our lines and nets, not one fish ever went after our impromptu fishing poles. Tucked beside the road, behind a tall stand of trees, my father built a swing set. He shaved the branches and roots off a fallen tree, wedged and lashed it to the forks of two standing trees, and hung various tires from the top with sturdy rope. Many hours were given to swinging in the tires, sloshing rainwater from their insides, fleeing from a wasp nest, and shrieking as caterpillars dropped from the willow branches and into our hair. As the family aged and we kids began being too busy for vacations, parents too old to make the trip, the property fell into a neglected hideaway. Nearly a dozen years later I made the trip to the old place to investigate reports of a sagging roof from nearby neighbors. I'm sure my traveling companion was appalled by the 1970's style furnishings and lack of a phone and television, but if that's the case I never noticed. I tore through the property shrieking like a child. Was the old log bridge still over the creek? Did the deer still walk right up to the windows at dawn? Was the apple orchard still filled with the scent of blossoms? Did the tires fall from their perch, ropes rotted out after all these years? I spent my entire day smiling and exploring, spending so long in that cold, clear creek that my feet numbed. I picked apples until my hands were sticky with fragrant juice and stared up at the stars until the sun streaked the sky and chased them away.

Am I attached to this place because of the memories, or are my memories so powerful because this place is so magnificent? Why didn't the field mice in the garage and the lack of heat in the house deter me? Was I shrouded by my love and memories? Or is this place so charming that I fell in love all over again?