When I was fifteen I would walk home every day from school through the woods by my house. If we’re going to split hairs I wouldn’t necessarily call them woods any more than I’d call a toy poodle a dog. It’s more of a nature preserve that cropped up around a man made pair of lake. But, to those in the community, they were as close to woods as you’d get in the Long Island suburbs.
At 2:10 pm every monday through friday I would briskly walk out of my class to my locker. Once there I would recite the various inside jokes shared between my friends and say my goodbyes for the day. As I exited the large, brown aluminum doors I would swing my overencumbered Jansport onto my shoulders; an arbiter of future back problems.
Solitude and Silence