Many of my first vivid memories center around nature! I spent most of my early childhood playing outside my house in Taylors, SC. I was often described as a “wild child” and kept my Mom on her toes by constantly making a beeline to the creek behind our house that sat on a large corner lot.

I remember wanting to play with any neighborhood kids who wanted to be outside. You would likely find me catching tadpoles, climbing trees, chasing butterflies, and curiously taking in nature’s wonder along that creek. It was special to the adults, too! My Dad and Charlie (our next-door neighbor) claimed its water is how they grew the best-tasting tomatoes in their shared garden. They planted it together along their property line. 💚

My extended family lived less than an hour away in the Clemson area (aka God’s country), and the properties owned on both sides of the family offered their own set of adventures in my younger years! The highlights of mine are walking through a garden with huge sunflowers and corn stalks, tasting honey right off a piece of honeycomb (my grandfather was a beekeeper), and enjoying learning about plants and wildlife from almost every adult family member.

I come from Argentina and when I was a young child my grandmother Luisa and I would go for long walks. She was a beauty, she was tall and thin, she had long gray hair that she put up in a bone. Her hands were long and delicate and she laughed easily although I always felt a bit of sadness in her gaze. My father's mother, she was the one that introduced me to the power or nature. As we walked and talked together she would gently bend and gather from time to time foliage along our path. She would hold the leaves lightly in her hands. In time, the leaves became part of her. I did not notice this ritual of hers as she did it, as I was young and she did it so quietly, naturally and sacredly.

She was a healer, people would bring her babies and children for healing, she was an herbalist with amazing vivid blue eyes full of kindness and tolerance. She loved plants knew how powerful and healing they were and took time to teach me about them. She had a potted garden with many beautiful flowers and herbs that bloomed at different times of the year, geraniums were her favorite.

As we returned from our walks, she would wash her gatherings and make a little tiny salad for us. She never said much about it but I knew how important this was. I must of been around 9 or 10 years old at the time and I am now 56... I have never forgotten our walks and our tiny salads. I honor what she passed down to me, as I am a healer just like her and also an herbalist.

Thank you for the opportunity to remember.

My earliest memories began in California, where I was born and lived until around six. Although we lived near my father's Navy base in San Diego and moved around a lot, there were many memories of outings...Redondo Beach, Palomar Observatory, and many nights camped out on the beach. I clearly remember Mom planting pansies around a large tree in the back yard, and she had me help her...a small task, but one that has stayed in my memory since. We moved to south Texas after that, and spent many days and nights on this beach or that, a favorite pastime for Dad. An only child at the time, I would wander for hours along the beach, through the sand dunes, around a bend, never afraid that I would get lost. But there was one afternoon I had stayed away too long, and as I walked back towards our camp site, the small inlet had become a very wide expanse of the incoming tide, along with what seemed like a million very large crabs, just sitting there. I had nowhere to cross to avoid walking through them! I must have cried, since Dad came to retrieve me soon. To this day, I am happiest on the beach, just watching the birds, listening to the waves, taking in the salty breeze. There is nothing quite as magical as where the ocean meets the earth we walk on!

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Earliest memories: vegetable gardening, "helping" my parents. And everything coastal, building drip sand castles and digging for coquina in the surf.

I grew up in a small town in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. (I'm a Yooper!) I’m so thankful most of my childhood memories are outdoor ones. My parents took us on some really neat adventures all over the U.P. The beauty up there is indescribable, especially in the fall - the colors on the trees are so vibrant!

I was also very fortunate to have everything a kid could want, right out my back door...tennis court, baseball field (ice rink and great hills for sledding in the winter), and a playground. The structures to climb and play on were large creatures, like a snail and a frog, the swings were animals to ride on and there were large flowers to climb - I remember playing “Honey I shrunk the kids”, pretending we were the kids that got shrunk 🙂 I loved that playground, but some of the kids weren’t always very nice, so I would retreat to the woods right up the hill and wander. Ahh, Millie Hill…tall pine trees, luscious plants, wildflowers, creatures, and so many places and trails to explore...I believe it was my experiences here that made me feel connected to the natural world, and as a result, I developed a deep appreciation for Nature. This was my “safe place”. I felt secure, at peace and happiest in the woods. Throughout the years it became such a sacred place I started referring to it as “Dev’s Country” 🙂

When I was 2 years old running through my great aunt’s cornfield in Orford, NH.

One of my first real nature memories was when my father took my brother and I out to the woods near our house in Northern VA. We were probably 5 and 8 yrs old. We lived near a Civil War battle site and there was a stone bridge that we would explore. There had been an enormous ice storm that year and the ice from the creek had formed 6" thick! It had broken into sheets that laid on top of each other like Lincoln Logs. With my father, the Eagle Scout, my brother and I made a fire from flint and sticks and cooked out soup and hot chocolate "in the wild". The crisp air, the ice we melted to make the hot chocolate and the force of nature along the frozen creek are still vivid memories.

Two memories come to mind when I reflect back to my childhood connection with the earth. The first was during the fall months, my sister and I would go outside on a windy day and catch as many falling leaves as we could before they touched the ground. We laughed and giggled as catching unpredictable falling leaves is harder than it sounds. I remember how the wind smelled, how the tree tops moved and how the soft, freshly fallen, autumn colored leaves felt in my hand. It's a memory of pure love in my mind.

My second memory, which is not too far behind the first in the timeline, is when I became wildly curious about the rocks in our driveway. One day, I decided to dump out all of my legos from my lego box and I went outside and started collecting every rock in our driveway that had mica on it, mostly because I thought they were really pretty and sparkly. It must have entrained me in some way because I ended up getting my BS in Geology some 20 odd years later, hahaha!

My dad loved nature. Just about every weekend, when I was young, he would take me on walks in the woods. Sometimes, these were short walks through woody areas near my home. Other times, we traveled an hour or more to visit a park with longer trails. My dad was a physician who worked 12 hour days, so these are some of the first and few memories I have of time spent alone with him. I loved seeing the views from the tops of the mountains we would hike up or the trees he would point out along the way.

As a child/teen I have had multiple visits to Florida Gulf beaches to enjoy the beauty of white sand beach against the blue Gulf waters.  The sunsets over the Florida Gulf horizon always provide spectacular views.

When I was 6 years old, I waded around in a creek by myself, somewhere near Fontana Village. I loved that quiet time listening to the creek, feeling the water. The memory stuck with me.