I was born in Jamestown Colorado and yet I never knew it. I moved to Bristol Vermont when I was age 1 1/2 and lived there for seven years. That was my home, my treasure, my life. Then we moved. Though my new house was only half an hour away from the bristol one, it was still hard to readjust. I lived in that secluded wooden cabin for three years more. My parents then decided to divorce and live in separate houses. It was hard to leave the woods and pond of the old cabin, but not nearly as hard to understand that my parents were not together anymore. My parents promised my sister and I that their houses would always be in the same town, yet a year passed and my father fell in love with another family and moved to Middlebury. I was upset, even though my sister and I switched houses every week and I still had my school, my friends, and my general world.

But my mother was unsatisfied with with our little apartment, she wanted change, she’d lived in the same state for too long. She moved my sister and I to Colorado, where we began a new school, a new house, a new community…A new life.

We leave this new life thirty percent of the year to visit my father, my school and my friends. Many would say how hard it must be to change back and forth, to not have a solid “home”. They would be right. Yet though I don’t have quite such a sweet taste in my mouth each day, when I go out to the snow or the grass and close my eyes, I can still smell that treasured pine I used to have in my back yard, and the pure powerful energy of the flowers, damp forests, and wood fire that danced my senses around my cabin. I can feel the network of nature beneath me, still connecting me to my old home. I can look to the stars at night and know my old life, so far away, can still see the same ones.

I’ve learned to appreciate what I have, instead of worrying and being miserable about what I don’t have. The world never stays the same for long, so notice everything you do have, everything that so many don’t. If you’re reading this, you have a computer, do you realize what some people out there would do to even have three meals a day? We take so much for granted: the roof over our heads, a hot breakfast every morning, a job, a proper education, a comfortable bed at night, enough money to be able to go out on a saturday and buy three new outfits! Just take a moment to understand just how much you still have.

I often dream of having a friend who could go through this with me, who could understand how I feel. I now I realize that I do. I have the whole wise world around me. I will always have the earth beneath me, supporting me. This world that has been trampled upon by dinosaurs and swum in by the first living creatures. This world that knows more than the whole human race—put together—could ever dream of fathoming. This world, this network of nature, that—though I can not even hold her hand—I can always count on, to hold my spirit.