The Girl Who Lived Outside
It may come as a shock to many, but I actually like being outside.
I know my former years as a couch potato make that difficult to believe, but that was depression. There is a difference between somebody who dislikes the outdoors and somebody who forgot what it felt like to be alive inside their own body.
My happy place has always been outside. Fresh air in my lungs. Dirt on my shoes. The sun kissing my skin like it had been waiting all winter to find me again.
When I was a kid, I practically lived outdoors.
From sunrise to sunset, I was in and out of the house so many times the screen door probably considered filing a restraining order. My childhood home—where my dad still lives today—sat on roughly four acres out in the sticks. To some people, it would have looked boring. To me, it was an entire kingdom.
Our backyard had a little playground complete with swings, a slide, a tiny playhouse, and a massive tractor tire that doubled as both a jungle gym and a gladiator arena depending on the day. We had tire swings hanging from trees, one of which snapped while I was midair once, sending my ankle directly into a tree root. To this day, I still remember the pain. Character development, apparently.
There was always some rotating cast of outdoor entertainment making appearances throughout the years: an enclosed trampoline, a swimming pool, inflatable water slides, basketball hoops, badminton nets, volleyball setups, and enough random toys to qualify our yard as a low-budget amusement park.
Then there were the riding toys.
Quads. Snowmobiles. Dirt bikes. A three-wheeled golf cart. A go-kart. A green dune buggy. Old trucks that looked like they belonged in a country music video filmed entirely through a sepia filter. Most iconic of all was the purple dune buggy affectionately named The Purple People Eater, which is where I learned how to drive stick shift before I was probably legally or spiritually prepared to do so.
Behind our garage, my dad built a dirt hill so he could catch air on the dirt bikes. In the winter, the massive hill our house sat on became the perfect sledding spot after the builders had to reshape the land due to groundwater issues during construction. Apparently, most people hear “water problem during foundation digging” and think stress. I heard, “Excellent. We have our own private sledding hill now.”
That was childhood logic.
Trails, Clubhouses, and Hose Water
My dad also carved little trails throughout the property. Nothing elaborate. Just enough to make the woods feel magical.
There was a walking trail near the front of the property where we would wander and pretend we were explorers. A trail through the corner woods for the riding toys. And, of course, the “clubhouse” hidden between four thick pine trees on our neighbor’s property because apparently trespassing feels significantly more whimsical when you are under the age of twelve.
We spent nights by the bonfire pit behind the garage roasting marshmallows, cooking hot dogs over open flames, and staring up at the stars long enough to forget the world existed beyond our little patch of land.
We drank from the hose because bottled water had not yet convinced America that hydration needed branding.
We played secret agents. We made up games with rules that changed every ten minutes. We kicked soccer balls through imaginary goal posts for hours. I played soccer for three years and was deeply mediocre at it, but that never stopped me from treating the backyard like the World Cup finals.
We played badminton until our arms hurt. Volleyball until our forearms turned red. Basketball despite the fact that I still could not make a hoop consistently if my life depended on it.
Outside was never about being good at something.
It was about freedom.
Butterfly Nets and Fireflies
One of the biggest staples of my childhood was butterfly hunting.
We would run across the property with butterfly nets chasing mostly the little white or yellow butterflies, but if we spotted a monarch, it immediately became a full-scale operation. The monarchs were celebrities. Royalty. Orange (or yellow) miracles floating through the Michigan air.
We had a special jar we would put them in once we caught them. Looking back now, I am sincerely hoping my dad released them every night because otherwise this story takes a sharp turn into accidental insect imprisonment and I would rather preserve the illusion.
We also caught fireflies in jars during the summer.
Sometimes I think childhood is just a collection of things we are no longer allowed to romanticize without sounding eighty years old.
But there really was something sacred about it.
The glow of fireflies.
Grass-stained feet.
Wet hair from the pool.
The smell of bonfires lingering in hoodies.
The sound of distant frogs at night.
The ache in your legs after spending ten straight hours outside because going indoors before dark felt like surrender.
The Opposite Direction
I visited my dad recently and hopped on the quad for the first time in a long time.
Without thinking, I started driving around the property clockwise before immediately realizing something felt wrong. Deeply wrong. Viscerally wrong.
We always rode counter-clockwise growing up.
It is strange the things your body remembers long after childhood ends.
The trails are smaller now. The trees feel closer together. The property that once felt endless no longer stretches quite as far as it did through the eyes of a child. That is the cruel magic trick adulthood pulls on all of us eventually.
But when the wind hit my face again, something unlocked.
For a moment, I was twelve years old again with tangled hair, dirty shoes, and absolutely nowhere important to be.
Where the Wild Child Grew
Despite the tension between my parents, I would still argue that I had a pretty good childhood.
Not because everything was perfect.
Not because there was no fighting or stress or heaviness lingering beneath the surface.
I had a good childhood because I was free.
Free to disappear into the woods for hours.
Free to ride until sunset.
Free to build imaginary worlds in pine trees and dirt trails.
Free to become loud, messy, adventurous, sunburnt, mosquito-bitten, and entirely myself.
I think that is why being outside still heals something in me now.
Nature does not ask you to perform.
The woods do not care if you are productive.
The sun does not ask whether you answered your emails.
Fresh air does not require you to shrink yourself to fit inside somebody else’s comfort.
Outside, I do not feel trapped in adulthood.
I feel like the wild child who grew there is still waiting for me under the trees.
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