Nature is Magical

I loved my grandmother's forest in her backyard. She lived in a big house on the edge of a magical babbling brook and a huge forest. My twin sister and I would play and get lost in there forever, wasting away our teen years in a magical forest.

There was an old treehouse that my uncles had made 50 years ago. We used to climb up, not caring how dangerous it was. We used to find deer antlers and squirrel skulls. We used to play hide-and-seek with the trees. It was like an obstacle course. We used to swim in the creek with the sunfish, tadpoles, and turtles. We used to catch butterflies and fish. There were stray dogs back there that we would hide from when we heard their barks.

We watched over baby deer and chipmunks, scuttling around on the forest floor. We climbed up small trees because I was afraid of nothing but heights. In the winter we would sled down the huge hill leading to the forest and slide around on the frozen creek. Afterwards, we would trek back to our grandmother's house where she was baking cookies and hot chocolate.

I came back 10 years later and half of the forest was cut down. Grandma was gone. Deer were being massacred because they had been eating flowers. Why do humans think we can kill innocent creatures because they are eating our plants? Houses were built all over the forest and the creek was drying up. And the treehouse had fallen.