When you’re six years old, everything is magical.

When you’re six years old, walking through the woods on a Saturday morning, the dust floating in the sunlight that filters through the treetops is pixie dust. A fox hole isn’t a fox hole when you’re six years old – it’s the entrance to Alice’s wonderland.

This is what I think twenty years later, walking the same path with the same bare feet. It’s still worn smooth, compacted dirt pounded into a clay-like consistency. Even from a distance, I can see the house he used to live waiting patiently at the path’s other end.

When you’re six years old, everything is an adventure. A tree is never a tree when you’re six years old – they’re battle ships and lookout towers and secret forts.

It’s windy here, and colder than I remember it, even in the middle of July. All that’s left of him here is the remnants of a tire swing and the heavy feeling of a memory.

Perhaps that’s the price of growing older. You lose the magic, and the memories become hollow remnants.